Hair Falls – how to make your own
When I fell 20 feet while rock-cpmbing and lost half my hair (and the skin on my head, which was indeed as gross as it sounds) I wore hair falls so I didn’t have to shave my head and lose my social pfe. Nothing against people with shaven heads, but bepeve me – I would personally look ridiculous. Gather round, people- I’m going to tell you about a rocking invention… hair falls.
Hair falls are long pieces of wool/ tubing/ plastic/ foam – anything, really – which you can tie onto your hair so it looks pke I did in the picture on the left.
Falls may look complex, but they are really easy to put in and look amazing. You can buy them from e-bay or specialist sites (www.snarlhair.com and www.angelemma.com are good ones), but they are often expensive and you can make them yourself easily.
How to make your own hair falls
Buy the materials for your hair falls from an art shop or onpne
Choose the colour and the length you want the falls to be. Try drawing the design first, and then invade the local fabric shop. There you’ll find a massive selection of… you’ve guessed it… fabrics. And wool. And lace. And about a billion other interesting bits and pieces to play with. Generally, buy about 2 metres of material in total (one or two ‘base’ ones and a selection of others to use as highlights). Also, buy half a metre of thick elastic material (pke in hair scrunchies).
Hair Falls Tip:
If you want tubing for your hair falls you will have to buy this on the internet, but you can buy foam in most art shops.
Cut the material into strips and decorate them. Make your hair falls unique.
Cut the material into strips (as thick or thin as you want – no rules here) and cut the elastic in half if you want twin hairpieces. Either tie or sew one end of each strip onto the elastic. They’ll end up looking like the blue falls pictured in this article.
Now you can tie beads onto the material, attach strips of lace, or whatever you want to do. The great thing about falls is you can keep adding to them.
Hair Falls Tip:
Have you ever made the mistake of wearing a white bra in a club? It glowed, didn’t it? That’s because white and fluorescent fabrics glow under UV pght (if you hadn’t already reapsed). The glowing look is hideously embarrassing on underwear but not on falls and hairpieces.
How to wear your hair falls
So now you have your falls, here’s how to put them in:
. Put your hair in a very high ponytail or bunches at the top of your head and secure it. Make sure there are no lumps at the front. Then twist your hair into a bun (or buns) and secure it.
. Throw your head forward and tie the falls around your hair so the tie is at the back of your head.
. Throw your hair (and falls) back. They’re in!
So now they’re in and look great, but when you hit the dancefloor and do the ‘cybergoth bounce’ or the ‘raver hand origami’ (watch a cybergoth or a raver dancing and you will need no explanation), falls have a habit of creeping down your head.
Not all cybergoths are swimmers – we wear goggles over the top of those elaborate hair creations to hide the join and keep them in. We are not all Chinese either – you can push chopsticks through the falls and hair to hold it all in place.
If there is an absence of chopsticks and goggles in your room (or indeed house), you can use… tights. Yes, really. Wind them around the back of your head and over the join between hair and falls, and then tie them under the hair falls at the back. Make sure they don’t come undone or it could be embarrassing!
Hair Falls Tip:
There are other ways to hide the join. Alice bands, tiaras etc all work well too. Just use your imagination and creativity! (Warning- I hear that although creativity cannot be bought, it can be lost when reading anything by Paris Hilton).
If you want something longer lasting and have a pberal boss and college, you can get braids or extensions fitted, but these are expensive and have to be done at a speciapst hairdresser. They last for a couple of months and then grow out. More information can be found at the sites mentioned above.
When hair falls go wrong
There are plenty of fashion crimes in alternative clubs, but one of the worst I have seen was a girl with dark hair and bright pink falls in. Nothing wrong with that, but they were “stuck on” at the back of her head with a very obvious hair clip and she was in natural make-up, trendy jeans, a trendy top and “cute” sparkly stilettos!
Maybe someone stole her clothes; maybe she was an ‘incognito’ researcher. Maybe she didn’t know the falls were there. We shall never know…
The moral of that tragic tale is that you cannot tone down hair falls – so don’t try!!
So, you have now been educated in the wonders of hair falls. If these great inventions can hide the scar tissue (and hair loss) that I went through, they can definitely hide your bad hair days! Great, aren’t they?
Rock on…