Today's hair fashions make
By Nadine Kam
you feel like a princess
Assistant Features EditorIf there's anything little girls have learned from the example set by Princess Diana and her cheatin' prince (not to mention our cheatin' president), it's that it's possible to lead a far nobler and happier life as a princess in mind. Scratch the excess baggage.
Is it any wonder then, that tiaras and glittery hair jewelry are starting to turn heads? Forget the scrunchies. The simple cloth bands have been replaced by barrettes and tiaras embellished with sparkling rhinestones, Austrian crystal, brightly colored enamels and feathers certain to make any woman feel like royalty.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Hair fashion runs from a rhinestone-studded barrette
by Charles Wahba, $22 at Tsuki's, down to a
plastic claw from Longs Drug Store, 79 cents.
Just back from a buying trip in New York and San Francisco, Lo Kaimuloa, co-owner of Riches in Kahala Mall, said she saw so many women walking down Fifth Avenue in tiaras, "You just die laughing. I thought, 'How great!' I may be sitting in my kiosk wearing a tiara pretty soon."Princess Diana had such an impact," said Kaimuloa, whose kiosk stocks the latest in accessories. "Celebrities like Sharon Stone started wearing tiaras at their weddings and they caught on. People are into having fun in life, so if you can accessorize and feel better, why not?
"A lot of glitz would have been obscene in our mothers' time, but women are a lot freer now. You have to be pretty confident to be strolling down the street in the daytime wearing a tiara."
Kelli Kumukoa, 21, a manager at Riches Kahala, said there are so few reasons to get dressed up in Hawaii that she and her friends try to turn every outing into a special occasion.
"I like to be different, so I would wear a tiara to go out. I would do things like put my hair up and stick a big silk butterfly in it, or a feather. I wouldn't want anyone to think, 'Who do you think you are?' It has nothing to do with trying to be better than anyone. I'm not trying to be a prom queen. It's just for the fun of it."
Four months ago, Riches started carrying insect pins, handpainted enamel butterflies, dragonflies and bees by Gerard Yosca, at $20 to $35 each.
"Bugs are big," said Kaimuloa. "They're on purses, clothes. This is going to go forward."
At Tsuki's Hair Salon and Boutique in Ala Moana Center, owner Tsuki Fushikoshi has been carrying select lines of hair accessories for 30 years.
Hair accessories have always been popular in Hawaii, she said. "So many girls have long hair and they want to put it up because it's so hot here. A beautiful accessory looks so much better than a rubber band."
Fushikoshi's daughter, Cathy Hiramoto, is in charge of the retail end of the business and replenishing the salon's supply of clips, claws and barrettes.
Hiramoto said that the hair accessory industry had been in a three-year slump, but now, "I order every two weeks. I order big and it sells out really fast. I just order what people are asking for."
She said she tries to stick with classic colors such as black, ivory and tortoise shell. These days, the basics are augmented with rhinestones. Whimsical pieces by Kirk's Folly and Charles Wahba are priced from $11.50 to $22. Those who aren't quite bold enough to wear a towering tiara, can don one of the new versions Tsuki's carries, simple headbands dotted with rhinestones or silk roses.
The new hair jewelry makes it easy for women to create their own evening looks without an expensive salon visit. A couple of baby barrettes works wonders on raggedy locks trapped in a growing-out stage.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
Kirk's Folly headbands decorated in rhinestones
($21.50) and silk roses ($20) are sold at Tsuki's
at Ala Moana Center.
Hiramoto said the jewelry doesn't detract from Tsuki's salon business. "We sell a lot to tourists who are out in the sun and water everyday. They want to put their hair up, but they wouldn't spend time getting their hair done anyway."And, if one is getting salon work done, the new hair jewelry is the "finishing touch," says Tsuki's stylist Laverne Masuda.
Elsewhere, barrettes, headbands, combs and bobby pins running about $6, can be found at stores such as Afterthoughts and Contempo Casuals. Afterthoughts carries a range of styles, including leather chignon holders ($6), accordion headbands wrapped with ribbons or beads (about $4) and even a hemp hair clip ($3.50) that dangles like an earring.
The Warner Bros. store at Ala Moana carries kiddie barrettes for $4 to $7 bearing likenesses of Tweety Bird and other cartoon characters. And across the mall at Christian Dior, bar-shaped rhinestone-studded barrettes range from $42 to $75. In addition, they carry hair mascaras, brush-on colors for $18 in disco colors like "Techno Blue" and "Pop Violet."
When wearing your hair jewelry, keep etiquette in mind. What's OK for the streets and for the clubs may not sit well at occasions such as weddings. A real princess would know that outshining the bride on her day is just not the fashionable thing to do.
By Craig T. Kojima, Star-Bulletin
The dragonfly is a fashion trend, but it also serves
as a symbol of memorial for Alana Dung,
"Hawaii's little girl."
At Contempo Casuals-Kahala Mall, Alvin Chung was picking out all the dragonfly hair clips he could find, and dragonfly earrings, and dragonfly pins, and dragonfly T-shirts and dragonfly wall decorations. Dragonflies
for AlanaThe little creature
captures her spiritWe all know the dragonfly is the fashion statement of the season, but this seemed a tad excessive.
Dragonflies have become a part of Chung's life ever since Alana Dung passed away last October. The 3-year-old, dubbed "Hawaii's little girl," touched the heart of residents who knew of her struggle with a rare form of leukemia and the international search for a bone marrow donor.
After Alana's death, her older brother Spencer heard Doris Stickney's story "Waterbugs and Dragonflies," about a waterbug that was transformed into a beautiful dragonfly.
Chung said that Spencer told his family, "Alana's a dragonfly now."
"It was his way of understanding what had happened and it helped him in the healing process. It reminds us that she's around us, everywhere," Chung said. "Since then, we've been collecting all the dragonflies we could find."
Some of the dragonflies may be used to decorate the Hilton Hawaiian Village Oct. 23, when the Alana Dung Research Foundation and Hawaii Cord Blood Bank host "Dreams and Dragonflies," a fund-raiser dinner and tribute to Alana, running from 6 p.m. to "dreamtime" at about 9:30 p.m. One of the evening's highlights will be a display of jewelry from the Hawaii Jewelers Association's dragonfly design contest.
Admission is $100 per person. For information, call Lisa at 737-8988 or Marilyn at 591-8293.
Nadine Kam, Star-Bulletin
