What Is This Magical New Hairpin and Why Has No One Ever Heard of It Before?

Line, Font, Parallel, Triangle, Diagram, Drawing,

(Image credit: Getty, design by American Artist)

published 15 June 2016

Before we get into this, let it be known that I've got loads of hair—masses. Like, an every-stylist-I've-ever-had-has-commented-on-it amount of hair. A lose-clips-in-there-until-I-shower amount of hair. A *full-of-State-Department-secrets* amount of hair.

So if only a handful of these weird, underground hairpins can securely hold up my Parmigiano-wheel-proportioned chignon, imagine what they can do for yours. Yeah—everything.

During the same David Mallett (opens in new tab) styling session in which I was conditioner-shamed in a good-hearted, Gallic way (opens in new tab), I also had about 75 pins attached to my scalp. Approximately three of these were of a kind I've never seen before: short and straight and heavy, but with the ends bent perpendicularly. They were stabbed fork-side up and in, the acute angles giving even more long-lasting hold than the waves of a regular hairpin.

"What are thooooose?" I asked way too late, AKA after a night of Bollinger and manic dancing and *still* waking up with my artfully twisted up-do intact. I fully own up to this as a journalistic failure, because as with all worthy things, they were kind of a pain to track down—even Kat Zemtsova, who's a bomb stylist herself and therefore has access to the hair-accessory black market, came up almost empty-handed after my own internet search turned up nothing. (There's a happy ending, though, so stay tuned.)

The closest commercially available in the U.S. version of these secret, magic pins: these (opens in new tab), designed specifically for dancers. The actual 8-centimeter "Fedora" pins: these (opens in new tab), from a French salon supplier that definitely doesn't do free international shipping. But then again, even if we don't have these exact épingles à cheveux, we *do* have good, old-fashioned American innovation—a pair of pliers and some elbow grease, and no one will know the difference.

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Chelsea Peng is a writer and editor who was formerly the assistant editor at MarieClaire.com. She's also worked for The Strategist and Refinery29, and is a graduate of Northwestern University. On her tombstone, she would like a GIF of herself that's better than the one that already exists on the Internet and a free fro-yo machine. Besides frozen dairy products, she's into pirates, carbs, Balzac, and snacking so hard she has to go lie down.