As simple and classic as her celadon green dress was in cut and line, her hair was the polar opposite. A bewildering array of textures and colors from caramel to mahogany crowned by a failure to decide between a bun, a braid, or a side part.
That's a really nice way to put it! I think it would be very difficult to describe and if allowed, I'd put a photo or a drawing in the book rather than attempt to describe it. .....or I'd steal from Wreybies' poem. Full credit to Wreybie of course....
Yes, I would say it a little differently. Let me see... Apparently her mind was in some fundamental way damaged, and the inner disturbance had seeped out into her hair, causing a riotous mishmash of colors and a chaos of incomprehensible styles in horrendous conflict. Parts of her hairdon't were punk, other parts New Wave, and yet other parts apparently trying to be more sedate but just upsetting the overall effect (if any such thing could be said to exist on that poor deranged head). I was immediately overcome with the intense desire to grab some heavy shears and free her scalp, strip it down to the bare plywood so her hair might have some chance at normalcy, though that would take some time obviously, and possibly require a stint in a rehabilitation center.
She smiled with the casual energy of a model, for model she was. Even the untrained eye could see it, in her slick dress of pastel green. Her hair silently spoke likewise, with its trilogy of techniques: two braids joined the twist of her hair into a relaxed bun, while a loose assortment of unbound browns hung down over her gown's straps. And while Herman let all these fancies flicker through his mind, the girl relaxed her way through the photo shoot with an air so casual his own ornate words used to describe her seemed out of place.
Quite unlike the symmetry she displayed with her stilettos; and the simple, unassuming attire borne by her, equally, simple, unassuming frame; her hair, which fell in controlled disarray: and more upon one shoulder than the other, provided a contrast of forms not oft seen in someone of her banal status. She was the living paradox of a popular girl with a bohemian streak; something her conformist, elitist clique sisters chided her for, but secretly wished to, themselves, be.
She'd styled her hair as a Gibson girl from the left and as a Norse berserker from the right. She didn't mind the stares and whispers. She was, much to her father's dismay, every part a debutante.
"While in some ways the look intrigued her, on balance Madison decided to steer clear of the Presidential Stylist in the future." I jest!
Jennifer knew that she had made a terrible mistake the minute she saw her hair in a mirror, but she was too distracted by Jeremy's massive pecs to actually care. And the bacon-date hoeur d'oeuvres were simply too delicious. She could hardly decide between the two.
I think they call them cornrows. A fusion of styles that traversed the decades, from '60's quiff to '80's flat top and mullet, via '90's scrapeback and pineapple, to more modern culturally-appropriated cornrows. Either she's cool beyond my understanding, or her hairdresser's on crack.
Jane looked like she'd been attacked by a hairdresser and lost. As she brushed a brown lock out of the way, I wasn't able to stop staring at the two cornrows, so tight they showed four white stripes of her scalp.
Okay. So, how would you describe her hair? I'm thinking about words like cascade of golden curls, intertwine, etc
Her flaxen hair was braided in a pseudo-Nordic manner, leaving much to straggle in disarray upon her shoulders.
Doesn't flaxen mean blonde? I googled it and this came up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chestnut_pony_with_flaxen.jpg Shouldn't it be "flaxen mane"? Isn't flaxen an adjective?
Yes, it should be flaxen mane and tail I suppose. It seems that Wiki page is made by a bot and the title got cut short or something. Oh, I see what happened—someone just uploaded that picture and the title of the image became the title of the page; notice it ends with .jpg. So it's just a matter of somebody making a wiki page they really didn't care about enough to edit.
When I see a reference to a “mane” of a person’s hair, I think of Farrah Faucet or Neil Diamond in the early 70’s. This Game of Thrones character - I haven’t watched so don’t know who this - has hair that is somewhat scraggly. It is obvious though that she has been in some sort of heavy activity - the dirty arms indicate that. She might have a mane, but in that pic, I wouldn’t call it that.
When he said mane he was referring to the image of a horse that he linked to, in reference to the word Flaxen. Although it really would sort of fit the character as well, wouldn't it? I agree though, I would shy away from using terms that —what would you call it? The opposite of anthropomorphizing an animal—maybe Animalizing a person.
A bun. She left a lot of loose hair trailing down in the front touching her upper chest, and a little in the back, much shorter. I went very minmal with thjis becasue there's aproblem with trying to pack too muchy information into a sentence or a group of them—that's called an infodump, and it threatens to overwhelm everything else. Instead you want to break uop the inormation and spread it around a bit, distirubte it less heavily. @Steve Rivers called this Sprinkles, rather than putting all the colorful sugar pellets in one spot, you sprinkle them liberally all over the donut. You could have already mentioned elsewhere that she has long black hair, so that doesn't need to be re-iterated here.
I was particularly wondering how those loose strands of hair can be described in a poetic and at the same time not schmaltzy way!