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Scrunchies – The Ubiquitous 90s Hair Accessory

Nowadays seen only on ice dancers, ballet dancers, the hair of tweenage girls or the last day of work before Christmas (with little bells and snowball pompoms attached), scrunchies were once far from being a fashion nightmare and were actually a hot hair trend.

Though most of the fashion fads of the 90's could still hold their own in the noughties, I personally hope that scrunchies never make a fashion come back. Not that I didn't wear them. I had a bunch of the things! Red velour, tie dye denim, gingham cotton. I had so many I had to devote half of my underwear drawer to their storage. I had the lot, and I wore them with ponytails or buns.

For the scrunchie virgin let me explain. Scrunchies were elastic hair bobbles with a thick and scrunched up fabric outer layer. The great thing about them was that you could make them yourself (or, ask your long-suffering mom to do it). You just stitched a rectangle of fabric into a tube, popped a bit of elastic through the tube and stitched the ends together and hey presto – a designer scrunchie for less than a dollar. One of the cheapest 90's fashion accessories around.

Scrunchies may be a fashion faux pas nowadays (unless you are a gymnast) but they were once the absolute accessory which could be matched with every outfit and even worn around your wrist. Some people even displayed more scrunchie than hair with the fabrics reaching mammoth proportions. Brilliant because they didn't rip out your hair like an elastic band would, simply everyone loved scrunchies.

Scrunchies are still scarily widely available and Sienna Miller and Sarah Jessica Parker recently contributed to the nineties fashion comeback by sporting a scrunchie. Let’s hope and say a prayer to all gods of fashion (Donna Karren, Vivienne Westwood, et al) that it stops there and the attack of the scrunchies spreads no further!

Now say it with me “I do solemnly swear to never grace a public place whilst wearing a scrunchie unless it is Halloween, Christmas or National Bad Hair Day. If I break this most precious promise may I be struck down by the Swarovski Crystal encrusted truncheons of the Fashion Police and punished with 300 hours of community service in a hideous orange suit seeing to the poor unfortunates who have lost their social lives because of the poor fashion choice of the dreaded scrunchie.”