Remember the huge jaw-toothed clips that stopped your ponytail falling in your face during double maths? Alexander Wang has just brought them back.
Jaw clips, teeth clips, banana clips, claw clips: whatever you called yours, we bet that as a teenager the plastic accessory played a serious role in your hair wardrobe.
Beloved by everyone from Rachel in Friends (who used hers to scoop ‘The Rachel’ into a don’t-care chignon) to Paris Hilton (who relied on a tooth clip to pull her long extensions into her trademark half-up style), an array of brightly-coloured, black, brown and tortoiseshell hair clips was a Nineties essential.
In recent years the humble tooth clip had fallen out of favour, relegated to holding your hair out of the way when blow-drying. But at his NYFW a/w 2018 show, Alexander Wang sent models down the runway with their hair held back by a chrome version, stamped with the designer’s logo – and street-style bloggers have been snapped in little else since.
Not since the scrunchie has a much-mocked hair accessory made such a triumphant return. Stylist spoke to iconic hairdresser and the person responsible for creating the looks, Guido Palau, who describes the hair at the Wang show as “a take on the power dressing of the Eighties, drawing on the idea that each model is someone in the corporate world”.
“The banana clips are nostalgic. Designed by Wang, they’re like a silver spine running up the head,” Palau continues. “I love when something has been around [for years] and it has a funny connotation, and then it’s reintroduced into fashion and we are forced to look at it in a different way.
Wang is remaining tight-lipped about whether his designer clips will ever be available to buy – so below, we’ve rounded up versions that you can get hold of right now.
Just remember how much it hurts to stand on one, and keep these babies out of harm’s way.