Monthly Archives: May 2013

On… French rolls

For the six dudes, including my husband, who read my blog, a warning: this may not interest you.

Laydeez.

I’m obsessed with French rolls.

Not the supersmooth glossy Ivana Trump kind, but the messy rocky kind. The kind that looks you got it professionally done yesterday, had a wild night, then woke up this morning and thought ‘God I’m adorable, it still works’ and went about your day. (Not that I do that sort of thing anymore, because I have a baby and I’m all mature and shit.)

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I’ve been attempting this beehive-y French roll hybrid almost every day now for several weeks. I am better some days than others, and in case you want to do it too, here’s my method:

1 Flip your head upside down and brush it so it gets all staticy and crazy

2 Flip yourself the right way up, sprinkle EVO Haze Styling Powder on the crown and mess it up with your brush a little – the more you mess with it, the better. Want a really big roll? Tease your hair all the way to the end

3 Tie a two inch-long ponytail – ie, the band is two inches from the end of your hair

4 Roll and tuck your hair inwards  into itself, like a bandage

5 Pin with three pins  – I use superlong ones from Ricky’s but you can also get them here and here

6 Mess the top a little

7 Spray with the strongest hairspray you have

Ta DAH!

I use the AVO stuff because my hairdresser recommended it and I am nothing if not obedient. You can buy it here. There are loads of similar products around like this and this and they’re probably all great. I also use Sebastian Fierce Hair Spray available here or here, and I think it’s better than Elnett. I know. Travesteh.

Oh, look. I found this via Pinterest. Thank you Pinterest. This might be easier than my stupid instructions.

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It really is that easy.

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Another nice pic.

I always struggled with French rolls before. Of course, last time I tried it was the 90s, so things like hair powder didn’t exist, and from then until, oh, two months ago, my hair was too long. I never realized how long my hair was, actually, till I’d see it in photos and think ‘who’s that dick with the Rapunzel complex? She looks like an albino Axl Rose.’ Me. I was that dick. I had that Rapunzel complex. I looked like that albino Axl Rose.

This is what my hair looks like when lovely lovely Greg Ruggeri styles it, ie, the way I want it to look.

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This is what my hair looks like when I style it myself.

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ANYWAY. I think beehive-y French rolls are about to have a moment. I feel the way I felt about topknots, back before every girl in the goddamn world began wearing them. I saw a model wearing a topknot in a bar in Paris (the start of this sentence makes me sound about a thousand times more jetsetty and interesting than I am, but let’s move on) in about 2007 and thought to myself ‘that looks fucking awesome, I’m going to do that’. I felt same way about French braids in 2010 when I asked every hairdresser I knew if they could do them, and none of them could, and I had to wait till my Mum came to visit so she could do it for me.

I’m sick to death of topknots, and I still can’t do French braids so I never fully embraced them.

But I am in love with French rolls.

PS Oh, God. Fox just asked me if I was intentionally channelling Patsy from Absolutely Fabulous.

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Let’s face it, it’s not far off, is it?

 

On… BROOKLYN GIRLS the British cover!

It’s on Amazon.co.uk, which means it’s official. The UK cover for BROOKLYN GIRLS is here!

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I KNOW. ISN’T IT AMAZING. I CAN’T EVEN USE EXCLAMATION MARKS AND QUESTION MARKS. I AM JUST SHOUTING.

I am so in love with this cover. The lovely and talented people at Quercus have been perfecting it for ages, and from the moment they began showing me the concepts I was 100% on board. Amazing, amazing, amazing. I love that they’re using my strapline ‘Life begins at 22’ on the front, too.

Quercus has equally exciting covers for the second and third books in the BROOKLYN GIRLS series, but I’ll post them later… (oh, yah, it’s a series, mmmhmm. Each book is written ‘by’ a different character in a group of friends as they go through their 20s.)

I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the UK cover in comparison to the US cover, which I also absogoddamnlutely adore.

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But it turns out, I can love them both, like children, without having a favorite. The UK one is sharp and naughty and charmingly bold. The US one is fun and friendly and cool. These are all adjectives that I hope will apply to the books, so I’m pretty much the happiest little author in the world right about now.

Pre-order now if you love me, here for the UK and here for the US and here for the rest of the world. Or even if you don’t love me, I don’t mind, but pre-order anyway….