Hairpin (fashion)

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Hairpins (around 600 b.c.)

A bobby pin, a type of hairpin

A hair pin or hairpin is a long device used to hold a person's hair in place.

Hairpins made of metal, ivory, bronze, carved wood, etc. were used in ancient Assyria and Egypt for securing decorated hairstyles. Such hairpins suggest, as graves show, that many were luxury objects among the Egyptians and later the Greeks, Etruscans, and Romans. Major success came in 1901 with the invention of the spiral hairpin by New Zealand inventor Ernest Godward. This was a predecessor of the hair clip.

The hairpin may be decorative and encrusted with jewels and ornaments, or it may be utiliarian, and designed to be almost invisible while holding a hairstyle in place.

Some hairpins are a single straight pin, but modern versions are more likely to be constructed from different lengths of wire that are bent in half with a u-shaped end and a few kinks along the two opposite portions. The finished pin may vary from two to six inches in final length. The length of the wires enables placement in several styles of hairdos to hold the style in place. The kinks enable retaining the pin during normal movements.

A hairpin patent was issued to Kelly Chamandy in 1925.^[1]