Oh no, is crimping back?

News that crimping is back in fashion made me relive my childhood memories of having, quite frankly, bad hair, writes Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

Sitting in the hairdresser’s chair last week, wishing for a total transformation but knowing that I’d end up asking for a trim, I turned to the style pages of the nearest paper and read that crimping is back. Remember crimping? If you don’t, then congratulations. You’re exactly the right age to try it this time around.

Alas, I do remember crimping and I remember it as one of the most unattractive hair trends of the 1980s, right up there with the permed mullet (which also seems to be on the way back again if the internet can be trusted). Basically, it involved pressing your hair between corrugated hot irons that left you with a crinkly “do”. For texture, think McCoy’s. It looked brilliant on the models in Just Seventeen and the girls from Bananarama. On me, it looked as though I’d stuck my fingers in a socket for the five minutes it took for the crinkle to drop out, leaving me looking like the lead singer from Prefab Sprout again. There were many pop stars I wanted to look like in the 1980s, but Paddy McAloon with his lank brown bob, was not one of them.