Here is a true statement completely deserving of your likely scorn: Until recently, I thought Carrie Bradshaw and I saw eye-to-eye in the fashion department. Sure, she pushes the envelope further than the average mailman and I’ve always been a little unsure of her cropped, white button-down plus belt look, but on the whole, I pretty much always see her and think, “Would wear! Correction: will wear.” But before I crack another self-deprecating joke about how I’m the first person to ever admire Carrie Bradshaw’s style and oh my goodness I am the! most! original!, let me stop myself right there and get to the meat of this story which is that LATELY I have found myself hankering to wear…a scrunchie.
(Requisite pause for dramatic effect).
Are you familiar with Carrie Bradshaw’s anti-scrunchie tirade, essentially the beginning of the end of her relationship with one Jack Berger? If not, please direct your attention to season six and thank me later.
At first I wasn’t sure where this hankering originated, so I started investigating. I Googled recent news hits for “scrunchies on the runway” and “scrunchies street style,” thinking maybe they made an appearance at fashion week this past February, thus freshly infiltrating my subconscious. Nope. The only somewhat relevant thing that came up was a New York Times article from 2014 entitled “The Scrunchie Grows Up,” which provides a smattering of proof that the scrunchie might be staging a comeback. But that was three years ago, and I’m pretty sure the scrunchie hasn’t come back. Yet.
What was the genesis of my scrunchie yearning? I found the answer tucked away the bookmarks folder of my Instagram, where I had previously saved a photo Frederikke Sofie posted of herself from the March 2017 edition of Vogue. She’s applying face lotion and her curly blonde hair is swooped up in a haphazard bun with (DUN DUN DUN DAAA): a scrunchie. And she looks so dang cool. Clearly my subconscious had registered this fact and planted the seed from which scrunchie cravings suddenly sprouted.
A mere two days after I made this discovery, we published a story on Man Repeller about the comeback of 2000s-era denim (things are always coming back, aren’t they?) by Pandora Sykes. In the accompanying photo editorial, Pandora wears a bright red scrunchie in her hair. She, like Frederikke, looks impeccably cool, and I would go so far as to attribute the nascence of her entire outfit’s it-factor to the rosy ring of elasticized fabric around her bun. My craving promptly thrupled in size.
I ordered a two-pack of white scrunchies on Amazon that very evening — white because I liked the idea of wearing them with crisp, almost see-through white lace blouses and a dark, raw denim skirt and ballet flats or maybe espadrilles and a swipe of lip gloss (which is also coming back, I think), plus a little black cardigan if it’s chilly. And there’s my summer 2017 lewk! So glad that’s settled. Scrunchies, take the wheel.
Feature image by Edith Young.
