You’ve seen them on the street, looking like Pebbles Flintstone running late for ballet practice. They’ve sat in front of you at the movies, their giant, messy hairdos obliterating your view of the screen. Their chunky buns have brushed against your chin on the subway. They’ve invaded your television screen, from Girls to Bunheads, which is named for dancers who pile their hair high up on the crown of their heads in a defiant challenge to gravity.
But it’s not just dancers who are doing it anymore. The topknot - and her prim and proper sister, the sock bun- have gone mass, and they aren’t going away anytime soon.
Blame it, maybe, on the economy; the dirty little secret of the textured bob made popular by the model Karlie Kloss is that it requires a serious amount of salon upkeep. When times are lean, the lean go long. (Maybe that’s why Lena Dunham waited until her show was a smash to get a pixie.)
“Every girl I work with wants long hair,” says Kim Ferry, who runs the styling teamson Bunheads and Pretty Little Liars, shows popular with teenagers. “They are savvy enough to know that a bob isn’t versatile; with long hair you can do so much. You can braid it, twist it, tease it and, of course, throw it up into a bun.”
For some reason, though, instead of turning to perky ponytails or refined French twists to get their hair off the neck between washings or on a sweltering sunny afternoon,women have taken in droves to plopping hair atop the head.
While less involved than its foremother, the beehive, a proper topknot is more complicated than it might seem. It requires vigorously brushing the hair into a smooth ponytail near the crown of the head (only an inch or two behind the hairline). Then, one must tease the hair into a puffy ball, a feat often accomplished with the help of a fine-tooth comb and a salty, sticky texture spray. After rolling the hair into an ample pouf shape - or for topknot purists, tying the ends in a literal knot - you need plenty of pins and hair spray to hold the style in place.For a sleeker look, some women are opting to use the “sock bun” technique, in which a rolled-up sock or foam ring allows the teased ball to create a perfect, meaty doughnut shape. In either case, the goal is a bun that is as towering, voluminous and globular as possible. The total effect is Judy Jetson meets Swan Lake.
The amount of finesse and practice needed to fashion a plump top bun has led to a proliferation of online tutorials on Pinterest and YouTube(where there are a staggering 100,000 topknot lessons). Hitha Palepu, 28, a vice president of business development for a pharmaceutical company who lives in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan and dispenses grooming advice at Hitha on the Go, noticed an immediate uptick in Web traffic after posting a sock bun how-to; she says it remained among her top five most popular blog entries. “Women want to look pulled together and chic but don’t want to worry about fixing their hair or outfit in the middle of the day,” Palepu says. “The sock bun, once up, isn’t going anywhere.”
Mollie Chen, 30, editorial director of the cosmetics-sample service Birchbox, dated the topknot trend as far back as the Sex and the City era but said that it exploded last year “when cutting up socks and talking about what color sock you needed for your hair color started popping up all over our blog and magazine.”
“Our video about sleek versus messy topknots was our most popular in March,” she said, “and our sock bun feature is one of our all-time top posts.”
It’s also been spotted on the runways (Bottega Veneta, Lanvin), on celebrities (Beyonce, Diane Kruger, Gwen Stefani and Queen Latifah at the recent New York City Ballet gala) and reality stars (Lauren Conrad called it her go-to hairdo at a recent Lucky conference, Palepu says), and predictably was seen at high school proms.
“I see teenagers wearing the look all the time,” Ferry says. “YouTube is amazing; I’ve been a stylist for decades now, and I keep learning new ways to do hair from it.Women have total access to it, which means they are experimenting more with dramatic styles like topknots. You can really be an expert in a day, and you don’t need to walk into a salon to do your hair for prom or an event anymore. It eliminates the fear of trying something new.”
Sherry Heart, who runs the hair department on the HBO show Girls, said the style grew out of street culture and women playing with volume and proportions. “When we started doing Shoshanna’s hair in quirky sock buns and severe up-dos, we did it because we thought that she would be copying fashion-forward women that she saw in New York or in magazines. We first put the style on Jemima Kirke, who plays Shoshanna’s cooler, older cousin. We figured that Shoshanna would see it and mimic it, just as many girls are doing on YouTube right now.”
Heart, who uses social media and Instagram to hunt down the latest trends in Brooklyn, where the show is filmed, says the crew had a shorthand for spotting the high bun style. “The other day, my co-worker sent me a text that said ‘Topknot alert!’ with a photo. We do it all the time.It’s like hunting in the urban jungle.”
As for the pesky topknots that get in the way at the movies or theater? Heart advised taking them down for cultural events. “When you are in a roomful of people, lower your topknot to the nape!”
Ferry agrees. “Top-bun girls should always sit in the back row. There has to be some awareness. Just because you are on trend doesn’t mean you get to block everyone’s view.”
Style, Pages 24 on 05/28/2013