Btw for anyone who is planning a Sylvia cosplay (like me): her hair is built on a very VERY large bun form or “sock bun.” That’s how they got that HUGE bun in the back of her head that’s really bigger than even the thickest hair would be if you put it into a natural bun by coiling it.
You can buy bun forms on the internet but the reason they’re called “sock buns” is that the traditional way to do this (especially among dancers) is to take two socks, cut off the toes, and roll them together to make a donut. Here is an actual sock bun donut I own that I actually made with socks:
You put your hair in a ponytail, pull it through the donut, and then, depending on the length of your hair, either literally roll your hair all the way down, or slide the donut all the way to the base of your ponytail, then just sort of spread the hair all around it and secure it with another hair tie. Most photos online show this rolling method:
but I personally don’t like this - it’s really hard to get hair to roll like this, and at least when I was a dancer, this is not how we did it. This very 2016 photo I found shows how we ACTUALLY did these when I was young:
The advantage of this is that it produces a really nice, smooth, secure bun. If your hair is long you’ll have a whole ring of hair left over, the girl in that picture braided hers but if it was short enough we used to just sweep it under. You can also pretty easily account for this by just making bigger forms/sock donuts - the longer your hair, the bigger donut it can easily cover. You can tell this is how Sylvia’s hair is done bc she has the very distinctive hair pattern from the back where the hair flows out from the center of the bun, vs a coil bun which looks very different:
Sylvia’s bun form is REALLY, really big which I think is very cute. This was a really smart move from a production perspective bc this is a really easy, reliable hairstyle, and with her hat, eyepatch & IEM/mic Sylvia has a LOT of stuff on her head - you can kind of anchor things to a sock/formed bun by sticking pins into it - her mic looks like it’s pinned to her bun on the underside - so it’s just a really good idea for this character on a practical level.
However I kind of feel like this has story/character implications too if you want to take it too seriously (which I do). Sockbuns are easy, fast, and secure, and because of the sock in the middle they add a huge amount of volume to your hair - even the thinnest hair can make a massive bun if you just use a bigger donut, so you can shortcut your way to a super old-fashioned glamorous aesthetic really easily. And traditionally, they are made with actual socks; you can of course buy them but the socks work just fine. It makes perfect sense for a woman in a profession where she needs her hair secure & out of her way, who probably doesn’t have a ton of time, who clearly has a glamour streak, and who probably has somewhat limited access to resources, to do her hair this way. She doesn’t have infinite time to spend on her appearance and I feel like they might not have pre-made bun forms in DRAAG, but she certainly has socks, and she just wants to be glamorous despite it all.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk
