rollers that spelled an end to the wash & set

CARMEN ROLLERS, launched 1960s, from £27.49

DID any household not have a set of Carmen rollers in the Seventies? A bulky plastic case of assorted curlers to be plugged in well in advance of a big night out?

For several years, no self-respecting woman with hair below her ears was without them.

One merely had to switch on, wait for the case’s metal rods to heat up the spiky rollers around them (for an interminable period of time by today’s standards), then, when ready, take the appropriate-sized roller (the smaller the Carmen, the tighter the curl) and wind a section of dry hair around it, up to the scalp, securing with a U-shaped pin, and allow to cool.

It sounds like a fiddly and convoluted process now, when we’re accustomed to digital tongs that heat to piping hot in seconds. But at the dawn of the Seventies, Carmens sparked a home haircare revolution that directly shaped the beauty routines of today.

Where women had previously had their hair set weekly or fortnightly in a local salon, now they could do it themselves before work.

Styles became softer, curls more relaxed. A woman could now change her hairstyle from straight to wavy to curly on a daily basis.

The concept of rollers themselves was nothing new, but the ability to heat them electrically, rather than leave rags or curlers in overnight, represented a huge advance. And while Carmen wasn’t the innovator (Panasonic made the first set of heated rollers for the Japanese market), its rollers were the most loved, due to their extraordinary reliability and robustness.

They are unlike tongs, which add uneven heat to hair, modern digital rollers (which heat fast but fall out easily) and velcros, which add body but no curl.

Carmen-style spiked rollers (like ‘Hoovers’ and vacuum cleaners, ‘Carmens’ have become the generic term for such rollers) shape the hair into even curls (small rollers) or big, smooth body (larger ones) that last and last.