Recreating Lucy: A Lucille Ball Vintage Hair Tutorial

Since becoming "ginger" I have discovered a new found love for Lucille Ball and her amazing hair styles, especially since now when I recreate them I can pretend I look like her (in my dreams). S when I stumbled upon this image of Lucy this morning on Instagram and thought I would have a crack and recreating it.

I have done the classic Lucy Poodle hair before and you might have seen my Ziegfeld Follies look I did in my meeting Dita post here, so I was pretty confident I had enough technical skill to achieve the look. Once starting it I realised how simple it was so I whipped together this tutorial for you folk in case you wanted to try it at home.

What you'll need:
. A brush
. Rat tail comb
. Heat protecting setting spray
. Hot sticks
. Bobby pins
. Hair spray

First thing you want to do it brush your hair and using your rat tail comb, part a C shape part starting at the top of your left ear and moving across the top of your head in a curved fashion to the top of your right ear. Once you brush your hair forward towards your face you should see the C shape part form. From there you should lightly coat the hair with setting spray and begin rolling the fringe in hot sticks. I like to start at the back of the C part and move toward the front on my head rolling small sections of my hair underneath the hot sticks in the directions of my face. I used about 8 hot sticks in this section as you want the curl to be quite tight.

For the rest of the hair I just started at the front of my face and sprayed the remaining hair with setting lotion before grabbing small sections of hair to roll in the hot sticks in the rolling under direction. I used the smaller hot sticks for the front of my face and as I moved to the back of my head I used the larger hot sticks.

I usually let my set cool for at least half an hour to make sure that the hot sticks are completely cold before I take them out. You can leave them for less time but as this look is more of a 1940's shape, you really want a nice tight curl to form.




Once the hot sticks are cool you want to remove all of the back section leaving the first C part section still rolled up. I like to start with the hot sticks at the bottom and work my way up to avoid the tangling.

When all your hot sticks are removed brush through your curls using you brush to removed knots and to separate the curls. The curls will become quite frizzy but don't fret, we'll be fixing that in a sec.

Once all the curls and brushed through grab a large section of your hair at the front of you face and brush it against your hand using your brush, this removes the frizz and encourages the curls to form large tight waves. Continue this process working around your head until the hair has been smoothed into nice curls.

Now what we need to do is smooth the sides back so we have the nice fringe curls at the front and the curls we have just brushed poking out at the sides. To do this take your rat tail comb and comb the side of your hair starting at the top of you head and moving the comb just behind you ear creating a nice smooth surface. The take your bobby pins and pin your hair in place behind your ears to hold it. You can also use those thick styling combs for this if you prefer. Once both sides are smoothed and pinned give your hair a good spray with hair spray to set your curls in place.

 

 

 

Ok now to do the Poodle fringe. Start off by unrolling the hot sticks being careful not to break up the curl. They should all look like ringlets once they are removed.

Grab your brush and brush through the curls like we did with the rest of your hair to remove the knots.

Once brushed through take your rat tail comb and section the fringe into 4-5 sections and back comb the base to create volume.

You'll look a bit ridiculous when you finish the teasing.

Now that you resemble a lion you will be needing to take each of the sections of you hair and manipulate the curls into what ever shape you want and pin it to the top of the head. I like to do a combination of pinning the formed ringlet curls to the side and rolling the unravelled hair into small pincurls at the front. There's no right or wrong way to do this, just use the photo as your guide. Once your happy with the shape, give everything a good spritz of hair spray and you're ready to go.

I know it doesn't look exactly like the photo but it's pretty damn close. A nice little 40's hair style to add to the repertoire.

Feel free to let me know how you all go with recreating it. If you post it on Instagram dont forget to tag me (@redvelvetrosie) so I can see.

Until next time,

Your friendly neighbourhood Red Velvet Rosie.