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

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 styling session in which I was conditioner-shamed in a good-hearted, Gallic way, 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, designed specifically for dancers. The actual 8-centimeter "Fedora" pins: these, 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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