Skip to main content

Embracing (Style & Hair) Mistakes and Moving On From Them


The current situation (aka mistake!)

A couple of days ago, I dyed my (very professionally and expensively done) semi-permanently pink. And I do not like it. Thankfully it was quite fitting for a viewing of Lady Bird last night at our local cinema, as my hair had become the exact reddish-pink colour of Saoirse Ronan's pretty head. I cannot pull it off quite (okay, anywhere near) as well. A mistake was made, impulsivity was fed, and I must now move on and pray that it fades out swimmingly. Thank God it only lasts 10-12 washes. 

But anyway, today's post is about how to embrace those silly things we do style/hair-wise, while also taking steps to move on from these mistakes. I know I've been doing a lot of tips recently... But! Here are my tips! 
Smile and the world laughs at you... Okay, I'm not really that negative, hopefully they smile back. 

1. Make the best of a bad lot! 

So, you've been to hairdresser and they've made somewhat of a religious sacrifice of your beautiful blonde locks. You feel so heartbroken. Your soul cries. But, now is the time to get to Pinterest or Instagram or simple old Google to search for some inspiration concerning how to make that mistake work. 

A blunt bob might not have been your intention but there are so many fun and interesting style choices to make with such a haircut. Get your denim jacket out, slip on a pair of sheer black tights, adorn yourself with a pair of docs and we have an instant recipe to an indie-esque grungy look that is so fun to experiment with. 

And that is the key: a style/hair mistake can lead to a lot of experimentation, trying things which you assumed didn't suit you, and wearing things you never had the courage to do before. Be brave, be bold, I promise it'll make you feel better! 

A futuristic style adventure involving my favourite wig, honestly, it was a game-changer!

2. Accessories (and a whole ton of makeup) are your best friends! 

I was saved by the grace of hats in 2016, when I had a terrible, utterly awful haircut. I had virtually no hair and it was, in fact, nearing winter. I did not want to freeze to death, and so, I became very into hats and wigs. 

Wigs are so much fun, if a tad itchy, but they can be such a saviour when something has gone awry. You can pick up lots of different fun ones on the internet, but be careful to choose high quality fibre wigs (kankelon is great!). While wearing a wig, the secret is to look like you're not wearing a wig. It's the golden rule. 

Make-up can be totally transformative also. Seriously, I look so completely different with my eyebrows and eyeliner on point compared to my just-out-of-bed look. Even my iPad doesn't recognise un-makeuped me from makeuped me (yes, I did just invent a word there!)... Again, the internet is your friend, particularly Instagram as there are so many fab makeup accounts on there. Get inspired! 

Makeup and accessories can really detract from any style mistakes, trust me, it will all be okay. 

A friend of mine, Dave, tried on my favourite coat of dreams. A good look? (I think he looks fab!)

C) Time is the greatest healer (tick, tock) 

We are impermanent, style changes, hair grows. It's okay to make mistakes, time heals all wounds. Your bob will grow out! And you might even suddenly decide you love it. 

Style is an evolution and along the way there will be dips and negative perceptions of how we look. My greatest piece of advice is to ride it out and wait til you can make changes, or for change to happen. There's a brilliance in impermanence. 

Right, folks, that's my little ramble for today. I'm sorry if it came across a little patronising, that seems to be what happens when I try to write in a jokey tone. I'm going to try to post twice a week now, though I can't promise anything. It'll most likely be Wednesday and Sunday, though sometimes it might just be Sunday. 

I hope you've enjoyed your short visit today, I hope you'll come and read my rubbish again! 

Thank you for reading,

Much love 

Louise <3 

Instagram: @jumper.dweller

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Not-Dinner-Party-Appropriate: anecdotes from the mental hospital

 I feel like a time traveller. I've awoken in 2021, sleeping through a pandemic and my teenage years, now in my mid-twenties. I have no dinner-party-appropriate anecdotes. Only mental ill-health with bouts of questionable wellness. I have been in four different mental hospitals, which I predict could be four more than most people. No one talks about it, including me. Like, at all.  Whenever someone talks about mental illness, there is this most impenetrable silence, followed by: 'I knew someone who was depressed once.' Or a casual, almost nonchalant change of subject. I mean, we talk about mental health a lot - how to keep it afloat, how to do 'self-care' in a commercially-assisted sense. It's all body butters and face masks.  I don't like it when people reduce preventing mental illness down to looking after yourself or not. That is a large part of it, a whole team of people looked after me at my worst. Most things cannot be made better with a face mask.  It

Imposters: a story about a Capgras delusion

  It's cold. I'm always so cold. My hands quiver blue and wrists bloom purple, after days of bang, bang, banging my wrist on the arm of my chair. I don't think I'm okay, but I don't think I'm not okay either. I think, I think, I think I'm breaking. I am on the children's ward. I have not seen my real parents for months. Some strange people visit sometimes. I hide from them. They are not my parents. They are often nice and I begin to trust them, then they'll do something off-kilter and I shy away again, like a beaten dog.  I had climbed out of a window, bawled through the lane outside the house and taken solace at a friend's home up the road. Gently I was led back to my childhood home and bundled into the car, driven to the hospital and admitted in hopes of finding a way to avoid another inpatient admission. We couldn't find one.  I arrive at the unit, brittle. Last time I was in this position, I had a home, but now I'm adrift. My parents

Section three - a mental hospital anecdote

  There is so much that I can't tell you about my third admission, so much I can't remember. Illness blurs the details and the privacy I owe to my friends erases the daily minutiae of the unit. In short, I had been sectioned - section three, six months. A treatment order, that in retrospect, could probably have been avoided. Or maybe that is just what I like to tell myself when I think about it late at night.  I had found myself in a field, shivering in the early evening sun. It was July, I was in love, but still very, very ill. I had been taken on four occasions to our local accident and emergency department that week. I was, as I read later in my unit-admission report, 'no longer manageable in the community'. I was sad, but determined. I was determined to make an exit any way I could. Instead I was flown to Woking, heavily sedated - so much so that I have no memory of the journey there and was deemed 'unresponsive' in my admission interview.  I digress. So man