For those of you who are forced to work within a corporate environment at any level, you will probably be no stranger to the fact that Goth and office wear are not really the perfect bed mates. However, largely depending on your office’s dress code, your boss’s perception of how to interpret this and your own creativity, it is entirely possible to add a Goth twist to your everyday work attire without scaring your colleagues any more than normal.
Through trial and error, I have worked out a variety of ways to do this; such as by starting with one small Goth touch or accessory, allowing a few weeks for the peeps to get used to this, then adding another, and so on. Also, that adding one statement piece or style to your look is something that most office bods can get away with in isolation, even if your boss is a raving douchemonkey who thinks that Goth and eating small babies go hand in hand.
Hair is one of the first things that we tend to notice about a person, and there are a lot of ways to style your hair for an alt look while also looking put together, smart and within the parameters of acceptable office looks. I have recently become obsessed with 1940’s/50’s styling, rockabilly and pin-up girl fashion, and Googling any of these things will return to you a lot of results for one particular hairstyle for girls: Victory rolls.
Victory rolls can be done in about a million different ways, and be thoroughly glammed up or muted down to suit the office, and they are also do-able for people with pretty much any hair type or texture, assuming that it is shoulder length or longer.
They also look like they should be fairly easy to get to grips with, but trust me, they are harder than they look! On the plus side, get them right, and they will stay in place all day with no drama, and not start to collapse as the day goes on.
So, victory rolls. Let’s go!
You will need mousse (unless your hair is fairly coarse) hair spray, hair pins and obviously, a mirror.
I started off by watching this YouTube tutorial:
Which was really helpful, but to be honest, I took away the basics and then had a go every evening for a few days on the trot.
I have learned that hair just washed is not ideal for doing the look, also, that one side of your hair is apt to look grand, while the other side simply won’t have it at all. When I first started trying to get the look, working with hair pins totally defeated me. In order to practice the roll itself, rather than making it look neat, I used hair clips, as they are easy to work with and also in some cases actually managed to be less obtrusive than you might expect.
So yeah I’m not quite nailing it, but even this messy look kind of works!
