Lifestyle
Blowing in the wind
Published 07 August 2008
Driving a convertible can be a challenge for the coiffured
A convertible car is regarded as super-luxe and highly covetable. And, indeed, it is. Not to mention very lovely when it's boiling hot (but only when you're going at speed, otherwise you fry). This weekend in London, driving not more than six miles, I spotted three separate Bentley convertibles. Evidently, at £130K a pop, someone's not feeling the pinch.
We have a convertible. It's a Triumph Herald 1600 in Wedgwood blue and white. For many years it was our everyday car, and we'd drive down to Devon on holiday with the roof down, whatever the weather: that was the challenge. I say "we" but in truth it was - is - my partner's car. I soon discovered, however, that if you have anything but very sort hair, convertibles, especially the more vintage ones, pose a test.
My friend Wendy, of whom I spoke two weeks ago, has an Aston Martin V8. I felt sure that posh cars would have some sort of special hair guard that would pop up when the roof went down, but I am heartened to hear that they don't and that she has to make do with Chanel hairclips to control her barnet. Apparently there's a special compartment between the seats that's just the right size to house such things.
When I first started riding in the Herald, most of our journeys were stop-start ones around London; we rarely ventured to a speed where hair maintenance was an issue. But as soon as we started going further afield (the Herald was our fishing-mobile) things got hairy. It's not just a question of vanity, either: not only does hair that has been whipped around in a vortex of air currents look mad, but it also hurts. Many's the time I have tried to flatten my hair, only to find it made me wince.
Any sort of hat you can think of was no good, because there was always the danger it would fly off. A firmly wedged baseball cap was about the only possible choice, but even then you needed only a waft to get under the brim, and it was gone. I even tried a fleece hat in an attempt to keep the hair under control yet not litter the motorway with chapeaux, but my partner drew the line at this, saying he wouldn't be seen in the car with me. I thought this was unnecessarily harsh, but stored it away in my memory bank, to pull out some time later.
In the end, the answer was obvious. Just look at any starlet of the 1950s in a convertible and she's wearing a silk scarf, twisted under the chin, around the neck and then knotted. You can't just tie it à la Queen Elizabeth II; it has to go around the neck. It's a look Grace Kelly did well. I did feel pretentious, especially with sunglasses, but after a while I revelled in it. The only problem was that, although I looked highly glamorous from the neck up, as soon as I got out of the car the illusion was shattered.
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