The alice band is back

One day about two weeks ago, a certain fashion-and-celebrity magazine published a picture of a Butler & Wilson alice band. Item of the week, apparently, and very nice it was too, all big and bejewelled.

By 11 that morning I’d had three texts from friends informing me of this photo’s existence, and suggesting that I might fancy perusing it for myself. By lunchtime, I had received about a dozen emails suggesting, with varying degrees of sarcasm, the very same.
As we all know there can be several conclusions one can draw from a single story. First, for such a loftily sarky bunch, my friends seem to have remarkably low standards of what constitutes noteworthy reading material.
Second, that alice bands are back in fashion (a point to which we shall return in just a tick). And third, and one I cannot quibble with, that I have a reputation when it comes to alice bands.
Maybe it is because I lived in a foreign land until 1990 and therefore missed that seminal era in the UK, known as the 80s, when alice bands were tarnished – irreparably, it seemed for some time – with the brush of Sloane Rangers (shorthand for upper-class women in the UK after the upscale area in London – Sloane Square, Sloane Street/King’s Road – they are supposed to inhabit).
According to Peter York, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, alice bands appealed to Sloanes because “they looked like they were not of this century, they were decorative and they were opposite of hairstyling”. It is perhaps a little worrying that they appeal to me for the same reasons (the alice bands, not the Sloanes.)
Anyway, they became the sartorial symbol of ladies stomping the pavements of London’s King’s Road in their Barbour finest, en route to meet “Tiggy” and “Piggy” for a quick bevvie at the “Sloaney Pony.”
What a sad waste of a blameless accessory. But then, my brain has been squeezed by alice bands for more than two decades.
Anyway, I’ve never been sure why making an effort to keep one’s hair tidy without recourse to a ponytail – which, after all, makes a lady resemble a prancing pedigree at a dog show doing a final circle before the judges, bottom gently cocked – should be cause for mockery. For those of us who have, as one hairdresser solemnly informed me, “the worst kind of hair possible” (thin, wispy and as yet undecided if it fancies being straight or wavy; no, he did not get a tip), anything that gives one’s appearance a semblance of care is always appreciated. Moreover, contrary to what 80s brat-pack films and the oeuvre of Winona Ryder taught us, flipping your hair about from side to side or hiding behind your hair in the belief it makes you look like a goth are not good looks. Women know this.
Just look at the enthusiasm with which they push their sunglasses atop their head, thus creating a square alice band. You’d think that we alice band supporters would applaud this but, actually, it just makes me despair.
But the truth is, for all my claims to their practical purpose, the real reason I love alice bands is because I am pig-lazy. Sticking on an alice band is a heck of a lot easier than trying to learn how to use eyeliner.
Earrings are fiddly and rings just fall off. Thus, the majority of my alice bands are for party use, such as an oversized one with mirrored shards and (my personal favourite) a brown-feathered one, which kindly distracts attention from the Kookai LBD.
I have honestly got more wear out of those alice bands than I have from most shoes I own, which is fortunate, as they cost a fair bit more (again, something we will return to). Similarly, a gold glitter one serves, I can reveal, as remarkable compensation for the rest of your appearance on hungover Sundays, when one’s complexion cannot get past the grey end of the skin-colour spectrum, and your outfit is best described as “can’t be bothered”.
And now, as the aforementioned magazine suggested, they are, with pleasing if predictable perversity, back in fashion.
In the Burberry show, they were elasticated and pushed down towards the forehead; at Sonia Rykiel they were big and black and studded with crystals; Miuccia Prada – who has long been an alice-band aficionado – used brightly coloured, chubby satin ones.
Partly this resurgence is because most of these designers are young enough either not to remember the 80s, or to associate them with sepia-hued, happy childhoods. Hence the 80s revival in fashion in general.
But there are other factors. There has been a growing sense of It Bag fatigue and so designers are in desperate need of finding a new kind of accessory to flog.
Accessories in general are popular with customers and alice bands fulfil the necessary criteria: you don’t have to get naked to try them on, although I guess that is always an option, and they never, ever make you feel fat. That they are, in the main, both cheap and easy to make is another appeal to designers and the high street, and, unlike sunglasses, you probably don’t already have some.