Hair That Survives a Dancefloor

The hair that survives a dancefloor is the hair that looks better slightly undone than it does perfectly finished. Choose a style with somewhere to fall to, give it grip by washing the day before, and pin the two or three sections that hold the whole shape. Then leave it alone.

Six hours in a warm room will take the bounce out of anything, and at Dreamworx the floor is busy from the start rather than filling up at ten. That is fine, and planning for it is far easier than fighting it. What you are avoiding is the style that only works at its best, because that one has nowhere to go but wrong.

Wash It The Day Before

Freshly washed hair is slippery. Grips slide out of it, curls drop out of it, and a ponytail works its way loose an hour in. Day-old hair holds everything better.

If you cannot face going out on second-day hair, wash it in the morning and let it dry fully, then use a dry shampoo or a texture spray at the roots to put some grip back. You are aiming for hair that feels like it has a bit of body rather than hair that feels like silk.

What It Costs

You can do all of this with three or four things from a high street chemist, and the total should be well under twenty pounds even if you own none of them.

• Dry shampoo or texture spray. The one product that changes the outcome. Own-brand versions are usually fine.
• A firm hold hairspray. Flexible hold is lovely for a wedding and useless for six hours of dancing.
• Kirby grips and a couple of small clear elastics. A few pounds for more than you will ever use. Buy the grips in your own hair colour rather than the black ones by default.
• A soft claw clip. Optional, but it turns a failing style into a deliberate one in about four seconds.

A salon blow-dry is a treat rather than a requirement. Ring a couple of local places if you fancy it, because prices vary between salons a mile apart.

Styles That Hold Up At Dreamworx

The reliable ones all have the same quality: they still read as a style when they loosen.

• Half up, pinned properly. Keeps hair off your neck, keeps length where you want it, and gets better as it softens.
• A low ponytail with the hair wrapped over the band. Sits comfortably, does not pull, and looks finished without much effort.
• Plaits, loose rather than tight. The one style that genuinely improves over an afternoon.
• Blow-dried and left down, with the front pinned back. Two grips at the temples do all the work.

The one to avoid is the very high, very sleek ponytail. It looks brilliant for two hours and it pulls, and by the time it aches you cannot take it down without a mark across the back of your head. That is a fine trade for a night out and a poor one for an afternoon of daytime clubbing, where you are on your feet from the start.

Curls, Colour And Fringes

If your hair is curly, work with the heat rather than against it. A style that has already been defined and left alone will fluff up softly. Refreshing it in a warm room usually makes it worse, so put a little cream or oil through the ends before you go and accept a bigger shape later.

If you have straightened, hairspray at the roots and a serum on the ends buys you hours. A room full of people is damp, and damp finds any hair that would rather be wavy.

Fringes go first, always. Take two grips and a comb, and know that pinning a fringe back at six o'clock is a normal thing to do, not a failure.

What To Carry

Three things, and they fit in the smallest bag you own: two or three kirby grips, one spare hair elastic, and a claw clip or a scrunchie. That covers nearly everything that goes wrong.

A miniature dry shampoo is a bonus if you have one, though a warm room does not always suit it. Nine times out of ten you will get more from putting it up than from adding anything to it.

The Five Minute Reset

At some point in the afternoon you will catch yourself in a mirror and not love it. Do not restyle. Take it down, shake it out at the roots with your fingers, and put it straight back up in something looser than before.

That reset takes less than five minutes and it works because you are moving in the direction the hair already wants to go. Dancing to a flashback, one of those proper oldskool tunes that draw everyone on to the dancefloor, is not the moment to be worrying about your roots. Pin it, forget it, and get back out there.