Geometress

The shape of fashion in a mod world

By: Daniel Reis

Readers, I must confess that the Wornettes made a groundbreaking scientific breakthrough during the shoot for the Issue 15 editorial, Geometress. Our art director Casie Brown was so adamant that we achieve period authenticity for this mod-inspired shoot that we literally traveled back in time to 1960s London. I won’t bore you with the technical details, but needless to say I think we nailed it. How else can you explain the pitch-perfect outfits modelled by our assistant publisher Sofia Luu and our graphic designer Natalie Papanikolov, or the era-evoking photography of Lisa Kannakko?

The simplest answer is usually the correct one, readers. Time travel.

video and text // Daniel Reis
titles design // Alexandra Niit
end animation // Barry Potter

La Brunette est Ma Blonde

Brushing hair and blushing cheeks

By: Daniel Reis

Wearing hair on just your head is so passé. For our Issue 15 editorial, La Brunette est Ma Blonde, wornette stylist Eliza Trent-Rennick created an entire wardrobe of follicular fashion for models Ave Smith and Rachelle Ralla. Hair blouses, bras, and shoes compliment other curiosities such as a clock purse and a telephone handbag. Photographed by Arden Wray, in the home of Erin Hall (owner of one of our favourite independent fashion boutiques Robber) even the wallpaper is worth swooning over.

video and text // Daniel Reis
titles design // Alexandra Niit
end animation // Barry Potter

Tresses in Texts

Five fantastic literary hair moments.

By: Mai Nguyen

There’s nothing more precious than seeing someone grin or chuckle when reading a book. It makes you want to interrupt their reading, asking, What? What’s so funny? Tell meee.

I set out to accomplish the insurmountable task of selecting the greatest hair scenes in literature, ones that induce those grins and chuckles. At first I looked for moments that perfectly encapsulate the cultural landscape in which they were written (if the word “literature” doesn’t carry highbrow connotations, then what does?). In the end, I went with five hair disasters. My reasoning as to why I was drawn to these scenes can be concluded thusly: 1. They were hella funny and 2. Let’s face it, who doesn’t delight in a little in laughing at another’s misfortune? (What? It’s fiction.)

That’s not to say that these hair disasters existed in their literary contexts purely for the schadenfreude. As your high school English teacher would be all too happy to point out, these scenes of hair gone awry are actually momentous turning points in these characters’ lives. Bad hair days can teach very important life lessons. If it weren’t for these moments, we would never know that even nice domestic girls can get caught up in their looks; that attacking one’s vanity can be a powerful weapon; that Prince Humperdink is a big-time douchebag.

So without further ado, I present to you five of the very best hair scenes in literary history. I realize five is nothing in a sea of stories, so if you have any of your own favourites, please share them in the comments.

Matilda (1988) by Roald Dahl

Matilda is a mostly charming story with some pretty disturbing child abuse thrown in, because Roald Dahl had a twisted mind. Matilda (the character) was a vindictive bookworm with telekinetic powers who lived with awful, idiotic parents. Her dad, Mr. Wormwood, was particularly sadistic. I mean, the man tore up her library copy of The Red Pony in front of her. Pure evil. In retaliation, Matilda set out one morning to ruin his nice mop of black hair. She mixed his “Oil of Violets” hair tonic with her mom’s platinum blonde hair dye and waited for the magic of peroxide to happen:

Mrs. Wormwood looked up. She caught sight of her husband. She stopped dead. Then she let out a scream that seemed to lift her right up into the air and she dropped the plate with a crash and a splash on to the floor. Everyone jumped, including Mr. Wormwood.

“What the heck’s the matter with you, woman?” he shouted. “Look at the mess you’ve made on the carpet!”

“Your hair!” the mother was shrieking, pointing a quivering finger at her husband. “Look at your hair! What’ve you done to your hair?”

“What’s wrong with my hair, for heaven’s sake?” he said.

“Oh my God dad, what’ve you done to your hair?” the son shouted.

A splendid noisy scene was building up nicely in the breakfast room. Matilda said nothing. She simply sat there admiring the wonderful effect of her own handiwork. Mr. Wormwood’s fine crop of black hair was now a dirty silver, the colour this time of a tightrope walker’s tights that had not been washed for the entire circus season.

Anne of Green Gables (1908) by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Anne Shirley would not be Anne Shirley without her red braids. Anne without her signature ‘do would be akin to Bonnie without Clyde, Thelma without Louise, Dumb without Dumber (I’ll stop with the road trip movies). But throughout the series, Anne always struggled to love her locks. In L.M. Montgomery’s first novel, future-dreamboat Gilbert Blythe teases Anne for having red hair by calling her “Carrots.” (Boys are just the worst.) Anne is convinced her red hair is a curse, so she buys a bottle of hair dye from a peddler to turn her hair a bold black. Instead, it turned green (the characters react in horror, but you know Anne would be on trend today). Anne comes homes to her guardian, Marilla, and fesses up to her silly mistake:

“Anne Shirley, what have you done to your hair? Why, it’s GREEN!”

Green it might be called, if it were any earthly colour—a queer, dull, bronzy green, with streaks here and there of the original red to heighten the ghastly effect. Never in all her life had Marilla seen anything so grotesque as Anne’s hair at that moment.

“Yes, it’s green,” moaned Anne. “I thought nothing could be as bad as red hair. But now I know it’s ten times worse to have green hair. Oh, Marilla, you little know how utterly wretched I am.”

The Princess Bride (1973) by William Goldman
Chances are, you know the movie version of The Princess Bride by heart. Heck, if you’re anything like me, you probably weave the quotes into everyday conversations (You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means). But did you know the movie skipped out on a pretty great hair scene in William Goldman’s novel? Before Buttercup, Prince Humperdink was supposed to marry Princess Noreena of Guilder. At a grand feast, Humberdink is about to propose to Noreena until suddenly, a breeze blows through the castle and Noreena’s hat comes off to reveal that she is—gasp!—bald. A bald princess! Humperdink refuses to marry such an ugly woman and in his true-to-nature assholery style, he threatens to wage a heavy war with her country for the embarrassment it has caused him:

Prince Humperdinck made his angry way to the balcony above the Great Hall and stared down at the chaos. The fires were still in places flaming red, guests were pouring out through the doors and Princess Noreena, hatted and faint, was being carried by her servants far from view.

Queen Bella finally caught up with the Prince, who stormed along the balcony clearly not yet in control. “I do wish you hadn’t been quite so blunt,” Queen Bella said.

The Prince whirled on her. “I’m not marrying any bald princess, and that’s that!”

“No one would know,” Queen Bella explained. “She has hats even for sleeping.”

“I would know,” cried the Prince. “Did you see the candlelight reflecting off her skull?”

The Outsiders (1967) by S. E. Hinton
Confession: Ponyboy Curtis stole my heart in the eighth grade. He digged sunsets, cited poems by Robert Frost, and his association with fellow Greasers gave him brooding undertones of danger. Could you blame me? I would have run from the law with him, curfew be damned. In all seriousness, if you look past the dreamy boys and the fights, you’ll find that hair played a crucial role in The Outsiders. After the incident with the Socs (no spoilers here), Ponyboy and Johnny attempt to disguise themselves. Ponyboy gets his hair bleached, while Johnny gets his greasy hair cut off. The hair change was symbolic of their new identities as fugitives and no longer that of Greasers. After it happens, Ponyboy bemoans the loss of his greaser hair:

“It was my pride. It was long and silky, just like Soda’s, only a little redder. Our hair was tough—we didn’t have to use much grease on it. Our hair labeled us greasers, too—it was our trademark. The one thing we were proud of. Maybe we couldn’t have Corvairs or madras shirts, but we could have hair.”

Little Women (1868) by Louisa May Alcott
I re-read the classic tale this year and was reminded of a darling scene when Jo March, second eldest sister-slash-writer-slash-rebel (she was portrayed by both Katharine Hepburn AND Winona Ryder onscreen), convinces a barber to buy her hair for $25 so dear Marmee can take the train to see an injured Papa. When Jo comes home, she removes her bonnet and to the horror of the sisters, reveals her newly-cropped hair. Jo is so proud of her boyish ’do and gloats that it will be good for her vanity. Later that night, she sobs herself to sleep and confesses to big sis that vanity isn’t so easy to chop off:

“Jo, dear, what is it? Are you crying about father?” says Meg.

“No, not now,” says Jo.

“What then?”

“My… My hair!” burst out poor Jo, trying vainly not to smother her emotion in the pillow.

It did not seem at all comical to Meg, who kissed and caressed the afflicted heroine in the tenderest manner.

“I’m not sorry,” protested Jo, with a choke. “I’d do it again tomorrow, if I could. It’s only the vain part of me that goes and cries in this silly way. Don’t tell anyone, it’s all over now. I thought you were asleep, so I just made a little private moan for my one beauty.”

illustration // Jenn Woodall

The Hair Issue of Worn is on sale now.

Smooth Operator

Losing my hair to alopecia revealed more than just the head underneath

By: wornette

I borrowed my parents’ car to drive to the West End suburb. It was a long drive, one that went by strip malls and big box stores, pet shops and pawn shops, shawarma joints and Swiss Chalets. I was not in my element.

The dermatologist had recommended Jenni’s Wigs, saying they had a good selection and decent prices. “These wigs are made of real human hair,” the salesperson said, “so you can wash them, style them, even cut them! But they also wear out the way real hair does, so we recommend you replace them every four months, otherwise, it starts to show, you know…” she trailed off. I tried on a few wigs; they were all so big, so fluffy, so voluminous, so styled. Here I was, a 25 year old woman in Chuck Taylors and a Le Tigre t-shirt, who used to style her short shag by washing it and sleeping on it while still wet, who was content not shaving her legs or armpits, listening to the clerk tell her the bouncy blonde bob really suited her complexion. I pulled the last wig off and finally recognized the person in the mirror: she was bald, and that suited her.

I started losing my hair in the early days of Grade 9. It began with one looney-sized spot, followed by many more. The dermatologist explained that I had alopecia areata, an auto-immune condition that made my immune system attack my hair as though it were a disease. With alopecia, the root of the hair remains in the scalp, which means that it is possible for the hair to grow back. Regrowth can be encouraged with cortisone injections to the affected area, or by using products like Rogain. I tried both, but soon grew tired of monthly dermatologist appointments and very irritating creams and lotions that would make my skin burn and flake. So I just bided my time until the hair returned, changing my hair style to best hide the damn spots.

But eventually the bald spots started growing larger. I could no longer hide them by parting my hair differently or swooping my bangs this way or that. I started wearing a lot of hats, soft lightweight berets that weren’t too hot indoors. I became a master of scarves, expertly wrapping my head in a flurry of silk knots and ruffles or crisply tucked cotton, depending on what the rest of my outfit commanded. At the time, I was singing in a retro-sounding rock band, so my headgear became very much a part of my onstage persona. Since my bangs were still kind enough to stick by me, few people knew that once the hat or the scarf came off, I looked like a sphinx cat.

I can’t remember what exactly prompted me to finally shave it all off. But one day I decided to lose the last resilient wispy locks in the mustard yellow sink of my apartment’s bathroom, using my then-boyfriend’s razor to finish the job (not big on shaving my legs, I didn’t have a razor of my own). I couldn’t stop touching my head—it was soft and warm, and just a little clammy. I walked into work the next day with a mixture of trepidation and relief; my co-workers knew of my alopecia and were cool enough not to make a big fuss over what was kind of a big deal to me. But one staff member, a part-timer who didn’t know me that well, hadn’t realized I had lost my hair—he thought I had shaved it off purposely. I was flattered that he thought I was badass enough to do such a thing, and at that moment my attitude toward baldness shifted. Instead of it being inflicted upon me, I was going to own it.

It wasn’t that much of a leap, come to think of it. Thanks to my family, my friends and my extended feminist tribe, I was already the kind of person who saw value in going against the norm and challenging expectations of female attractiveness, of femaleness period. I already cherished looking weird! In pop culture women are expected not to have hair on their legs, their armpits, or their pubic areas, but the head is supposed to be full of lustrous locks flowing in the wind. Being a bald woman and embracing it was just another way of flipping a proud middle finger to the rigid constraints of accepted commercial taste.

Then, one day, as I was applying sunscreen to my noggin, I noticed a bit of fuzz creeping through. Over the ensuing months, the fuzz continued to grow, and soon I was sporting a cute crop like Mia Farrow in Rosemary’s Baby. Why did my hair grow back? Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve read that it is rare but not impossible for this to happen, but also that it could very well fall out again. So my attitude toward the regrowth was the same as my attitude toward the loss: I just rolled with it. Today, my head appears to be full. You wouldn’t know I have alopecia unless I flipped my head forward and revealed the accidental undercut that creeps up around my ears. Whipping my whole upper body back and forth like a rag doll is one of my favourite dance moves, which I guess means many people do quite frequently see my bald spots, but at this point I couldn’t care less. This song is too good not to dance.

text // Marie-Camille Lalande
photography // Rémi Thériault

Read more stories about personal relationships with hair in issue 15 of WORN Fashion Journal, out later this month.