Diamonds aren’t the only gift with sparkle. Fairy hair, a common label for slender strands of tinsel threaded through anyone’s hair, also can provide some shimmer for holiday celebrations or a bit of amusement at any age.
“My friends and I loved adding fairy hair to our hair when we were younger,” Alexandra Zainuddin, an artist known as Inkotori in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, wrote in an email. “We used them mostly for fun and just to give our hair some colors and sparkle.”
Who started the trend? That is hard to pin down. Some internet sites say it first was a fad in the 1990s. Others describe the twinkling strands of gold attached to Beyoncé’s caramel locks at the 2010 Grammy Awards, while this year Saweetie showed off an ultralong side ponytail of multicolor tinsel in a TikTok dance video.
Fairy hair is inexpensive. On Amazon, for example, one kit that includes 2,760 strands of 48-inch-long multicolor tinsel, tweezers, pliers and hair pins sells for $9.99.
As of 2022, photos and instructions how to do it yourself — or do-it-with-friend — have been viewed more than 85 billion times on TikTok.
There are different ways the thin strands of tinsel can be attached. At Samantha Cusick’s three hair salons in London, “the strands are attached using a micro bead, like that what is used for hair extensions,” Ms. Cusick wrote in an email, noting that the method is safe for both fine and colored hair.
“You can wash your hair as normal whilst wearing,” she added. “The tinsel strands we use are heat proof and can be dried again as normal, and you can style your hair with heat tools as you normally would, just avoiding brushing over the bonds with anything other than a soft bristle brush.”
The tinsel could last from two to six weeks. “Clients can pop into one of our salons to have it removed,” she wrote, although most have it added at one visit and removed at the next.
Ms. Cusick makes it easy to treat someone to the experience. “Gift certificates are one of our most popular gift purchases, especially around Christmas and for birthdays,” she wrote. “It’s such a unique gift, we even created a limited-edition voucher for best friends to come to one of our salons together to get fairy hair.” Prices start at 25 pounds ($32) for six strands.
“Fairy hair parties have been a popular offering for us,” she said, “from hen do’s and office Christmas parties to birthday parties and festive celebrations.” In June, Ms. Cusick even staged a fairy hair pop-up at the Glastonbury Festival for the private members’ club SoHo House.
Suzette Sears, the self-proclaimed Glitter Goddess of Florida, often provides fairy hair installations for ladies’ nights, baby showers, birthday parties and other parties. She wrote in an email that the fad knows no age limits: “Just recently I was hired by a daughter to sparkle her 96-year-old mom and all her friends in a nursing home. My clients are all ages, but I’d say 70 years and older love them most!”
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