Alya and me

Some discoveries about this particular hairstyle

Early 30s photograph of actress Ruan Lingyu

When I was making the posts on 1930s fashion last year, I came across this hairstyle in period photographs and artworks but was extremely puzzled as to how it was achieved. It didn’t look like waved or curled hair, but wasn’t just straight hair either, as the ends were puffed out. Later, someone said in the notes that it was the aftermath of hair products, but at the time I couldn’t really visualize what they meant.

Until today. I had a ballroom competition yesterday and had to put my hair in a bun. Because I recently cut my hair short (to live my 1950s fantasy), I had to use ungodly amounts of hair gel to keep the bun intact. I had my hair like that since early morning, and by the time the competition finished at around seven in the evening, I took out the bun and my hair was curled into this unwarranted Brigitte Bardot hairstyle (the hair gel, bun and long time was akin to pin curling or curling with rollers overnight). I was too tired to wash my hair when I got home so I put my gross gelled hair into a turban and went to sleep. And then this morning I woke up having that exact 30s hairstyle. The ends even went in the same direction as seen in some photographs of Ruan Lingyu from the early 30s.

Given how common it was for women to wear their hair in buns in the 20s and 30s, I feel like it’s not unlikely that this hairstyle was the “second day” aftermath of putting hair into a low bun. Also, 20th century Chinese bun hairstyles were ridiculously glossy and shiny, so lots of hair products must have been used, causing the curled ends to last a long time after the buns were taken out.

So I guess I found an easy method to achieve an authentic 30s hairstyle lol. Anyone with medium length hair could probably replicate this.