The chignon is chic, but is it cool?
The bun is, indisputably, for grown-ups. Before women discovered the bob, putting up one’s hair was a rite of passage in the same way that boys graduated from short pants to full-length trousers. But, even though updos symbolize womanhood, they also remind us of prepubescent ballet classes: The neat, top-of-the-head Jennifer Lopez-style bun is the quintessential coiffure of innocence—the hairdo of demi-pliés and jetés.
The symbolism of the bun is, in fact, as hard to pin down as a stray tendril. Who knows the subtext lurking within each mesmerizingly intricate updo that actress Abbie Cornish wears as John Keats’ muse, Fanny Brawne, in Bright Star? Each twist and turn of Fanny’s hair is worth a thousand words of Keats’ verse. “Jane Campion [the director] and I had long discussions about Fanny’s hair,” says Konnie Daniel, the film’s hair designer. “At 19, you’re fashionconscious but natural in an unspoiled way. The character was lower or middle class, so her hair would have been natural—not with a lot of curls like higher-class ladies. We gave Abbie a bun with a centre part and kept the hair tight. We added hairpieces because, in those days, women added feathers and extensions. Hair was considered a status symbol.”
For those who follow the TV series Mad Men, the updo is central to a mysterious plot point in season three. Betty Draper goes with her husband, Don, on a business trip to Rome. She makes an appointment at a salon there, has her hair done up in a lavish La Dolce Vita ’do and proceeds to transform from a wholesome American housewife into a cosmopolitan, Italian-speaking femme fatale. The tipping point in Mrs. Draper’s tantalizing metamorphosis? Her beautifully engineered Roman updo.
Today’s dirty, sexy chignons are but a faint reflection of the fabulous updos of yore, in which every braid and coil spoke richly of foreign intrigue or social standing. They remind us of how much has been lost in the art of hairdressing and how the cut has usurped the bun in a woman’s rite of passage. At the end of Bright Star, Fanny mourns Keats’ death by chopping off her hair. In Fanny’s life, her scissored hair signalled the end of first love; for the rest of us, it was the beginning of modernity.
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