Growing up with curly hair—not like wavy or with a cowlick but straight up curly—is a rollercoaster of envy and experimentation. Your bathroom sink is cluttered with drugstore bottles, just the mention of the word "detangling" can bring a tear to your eye, and the "DIY" hairstyles modelled by girls with pin straight hair in teen fashion magazines are an actual, laugh out loud joke. Kilo Kish, Lorde, Charli XCX: recent years have seen small but significant strides towards recognizing the beauty and versatility of curly hair. Sitting down with Charli XCX to discuss her grooming routine, you can tell she doesn't front: there's no talk of wash & go, but she's not losing sleep over her low-key regimen either.
CHARLI XCX: I hated growing up with curly hair. I think everyone hates their hair growing up. Apart from blonde people; blonde people love their hair. Everyone wants straight blonde hair when they're younger. I definitely did. It's actually still on my bucket list: dye my hair blonde. But yeah it made me uncomfortable while I was growing up. When I was younger there was no such thing as a good straightener in my world. It just didn't exist. My mum sometimes would iron my hair on an ironing board. That sometimes worked but it never looked good, you know? I was never happy with it. People would always say it looked good, but it just didn't. But now, as I'm getting older, I really like it. How it is now [blown out and curled with an iron], this isn't my natural hair. My natural curl is really big. I wore it like that a lot at SXSW but people just started yelling "Lorde!" at me. I was like okay, okay she can rock the long curls and I'll keep doing my thing. But I love being able to just have a natural vibe. My routine is pretty simple, I am so bad at beauty and hair shit, luckily I have people who do that for me who are actually good at it. When I'm left to my own devices I just air dry it, leave it, tong it a little bit. There's one product I love and use a lot, After Party by Tigi. It comes in this pink cylinder with a giant pink ball on top and it looks like a giant dildo. It's cool. I use Bumble & Bumble shampoo and conditioner when I have it but I don't really know much about products. If someone gives me something to use, I usually just use that. Oh! And I like sleeping on it. Sleeping on it makes it really big and cool.
