Film Noir Hair

I have very, very hard to curl hair!  When I was a child it was stick straight and now is has a slight wave, but one thing has been consistent - it hates a curl!

So over the years I experimented with many many different methods and, after trying a lot of tutorials and watching a lot of You Tube video, I think I finally have something that works for me!

First I'll say I tried a quite a few different types of rollers and nothing quite gave me the look I wanted. In my searches I ran into quite a few people extolling the virtues of Conair hot sticks.  I think I first heard about these on Vavoom Vintage. These were popular in the 80s for that big 80s hair look.  I was more of a crimped hair girl back then so I'd never used them until recently but they definitely were key to my finally getting the curls I wanted.

I have long, thick hair so I actually bought two sets of these hot rollers and frankly, I could maybe even use more!  So keep that in mind if you have very thick and/or long hair.

I roll my hair inwards towards my face very tightly into small curls.  This works best for me since I like that Veronica Lake look. I use all of the hair sticks and roll the small ones with slightly more hair than the ticker ones so  they are all basically the same.  If you run out of curlers, don't worry, just use a narrow barrel curling iron on those back, underneath bits, no one sees those anyway!




Let them sit until they are completely cold then spray with a light coat of heavy duty hairspray and let that dry.

Unrolled but not brushed out

Then I unroll and brush it out.  It become an insane mass of frizz which I then can tame into 1940s curls by brushing the hair around my hand.   (Incidentally, I neglected to take a picture of my hair frizzed out but I think the brushed out curls would work great for this type of disco look.)

So this crazy frizz

Becomes this unified curl!

I also usually use large clips to create finger waves in the front and hairspray the whole thing again and voila, film noir!  If you like watching tutorials here are a few on using hairsticks for 1940s hair.

Added bonus, the hairsticks are GREAT for Regency curls too!  Only in this case you do NOT brush the curls out.