I am so excited for this tutorial! This is what I do to my hair almost everyday and I just love it. It’s a traditional wet set that results in beautiful curls. I style them in a vintage style, but honestly, a wet set is super-versatile for getting curls in your hair without causing heat damage. Let’s do this!
For setting the hair you will need pin curl clips, a brush and/or comb, as well as a setting lotion. I used heavily diluted Lottabody, which I bought at Sally’s. It’s not my favorite setting lotion, though I haven’t used others. I’ll be experimenting with others when the Lottabody runs out. You can also use water. If you plan on sleeping on your curls, you’ll need a scarf to protect them. You can also do the curls early in the morning and leave them in the whole day!
1. Create a deep side part. I part on the right and curl the hair on the heavy side of the part away from my face and the other side towards my face. Keep that in mind when parting your hair.
2. Section off a 1-inch section of hair next to the part. Lift another 1-inch section of hair from this sliver of hair. Spray the ends with setting lotion. Curl away from your face and continue through out the section. Clip with a pin curl clip.
3. Section another section of hair next to the one that was just curled. Repeat step 1, but curl towards the face, this time. You can see that I wrap the ends around two fingers and then roll the hair up to the scalp. I take the section of hair and I place my fingers on either side of the hair and wrap the hair around my fingers, checking direction! It is very important that the ends are saturated with setting lotion and that the ends stay tucked in—this prevents kinks.
4. For the final section, curl away from the face again.
5. Section off the side of the hair remaining on the heavy side of the part. Grab sections that are about 1-inch and curl away from the face.
6. Section off the other side section on the light side of the part. Curl towards your face.
7. Finally, curl the back of the hair. As I said, direction is important for pin curls, so curl all the hair in the same direction! I curled all the hair near the heavy side of the part away from my face and the hair near the light side of the part towards the face. This means that all the hair is curled to the right because my part is on the right. If you part on the left, curl all the hair on the left.
8. When done, spray the whole head with setting lotion and wait for them to dry. Allow for at least 5 hours. You can do other things while you wait!
Here are some funny faces of me in my Victoria’s Secret silk kimono pretending to be Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid. I know—I’m better than them #modelicious
Also, I needed to go out during the day, so I replaced all the silver clips with bobby pins and attached my snood to cover the back. I have #noshame in going out in pin curls. I ended up sleeping on my pin curls, too.
1. To do the brush out, take out all the clips. Make sure to keep each curl facing the proper way.
2. Run your fingers through all the curls to break them up. Follow that up by using a wide tooth comb to break them up. It’ll look like the 70’s.
3. Next use a paddle brush (I recommend the Denman one from Sally’s) to brush the curls smooth. To prevent frizz, brush the hair against the hand and use your hand to shape the hair. I brush all the hair under for a true vintage look. I also make sure to keep the crown hair very sleek and smooth so it looks like a 1940’s style.
4. When brushing out the hair on the heavy side of the part, I brush the hair out and added clips to cement the wave that formed. I then brushed the hair and shaped it.
5. I then pinned the hair on the light side of the part back with a barrette.
6. That’s it! Spray generously with hairspray!
My hair wasn’t the cleanest so I pulled it into a snood. But the curls helped keep the snood full looking.
Thanks for reading!