Bumper bangs or Pompadour

I decided to give this look ago as it's a classic Rockabilly style. I've noticed on Instagram that it's called 'Bumper Bangs' but in my Vintage Styling book (by Lauren Rennells) this look is called a Pompadour.

First thing I have to say on the subject is that it is easier than it looks...!

I've tried this a few times with zero success - this is genuinely the best it has gone. It's not too messy but you can see a lot of the pins, which in an ideal world, would be invisible.

I really like the view from the top though - it looks pretty good and the purple scarf is a nice contrast to my hair and completes the style. 

I cheated slightly by creating a fake rat fill. For those who don't know what this is, it's a hair net filled with your own hair that you sort of harvest from your hair brush. This is then used to pad out the centre of your style. It's kind of gross to be honest and, as I change my hair colour all the time, I'd end up with a multicoloured rat fill. There's something a bit creepy about keeping scraps of your own hair but I know that is the traditional method. Who knows - I might come round to it.

So, the fake rat fill was made with a small bun ring that I tied with plastic hair bands into a tube shape.

The bonus is that hair pins go into it really easy and grip into it well. I don't know if this is something other people have used as I just came up with it while I struggled to create the hair shape. It worked at any rate, the biggest problem being that you can see it if you look closely at the ends of the roll.

I used hairspray to secure it and a tail comb to smooth over the roll and try to tidy it up. The hairspray is quite sticky so it was quite frustrating as sometimes it just stuck to the comb instead of smoothing down as I intended. 

I think this style looks awesome on other people but I don't feel it suits me at all. It's too high up and away from my face - it's kind of floating over me. I wouldn't feel comfortable wearing it for real, especially not out of the house but I'm glad I tried it. Maybe I need to experiment with it further - perhaps make it larger and try to get it lower on my face...

At any rate I'm glad I was finally able to create one of these because it's been the bane of my hair trials, haha,

Thanks for reading.