Will Noele’s shampoo and set roll back into fashion?

WHOEVER thought Crossroads’ Noele Gordon might ever become a style inspiration? Well she has now, thanks to the one flaw in ITV’s new drama Nolly, starring Helena Bonham Carter in the lead role. Helena is simply too beautiful to play the imperious matriarch of the Crossroads motel.

However, her limpid-eyed, cut-glass beauty has made her version of Noele bewitching to behold.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who, watching Bonham Carter sashay on and off set in a mink cocoon, has been reminded of their own fondness for the voluminous fur coat of old.

Then there are the marvellous peignoirs and housecoats she drifts around her satin-lampshaded apartment in as she lights her endless cigarettes. But most of all, that hair! Bonham Carter’s Noele is rarely seen without her russet tresses set in a blousy confection of rollers and Elnett hairspray .

Our contemporary blow-dries and addiction to straighteners and tongs have meant we’ve forgotten about the very real attributes of a shampoo and set. Not for us sitting under a heated helmet with a head full of rollers. The notion is as dated as the doily.

But I think we’ve got that wrong. I remember as a small child watching my mother having her weekly set at the hairdresser. Her hair has never looked better. Now we’ve forgotten, if any of us ever knew, how a good set is simply the greatest escape from thin, lank locks.

If only the look was not so deeply unfashionable. Still, fashion and hair styles do change, as sure as night follows day. And, surely we’re all a little bit over the tonged bob now?

I’m not sure teenagers are ever going to embrace the shampoo and set, but perhaps the upcoming middle-aged Love Island series is the time where it can make a comeback Nolly-style highheeled mules, capacious kaftans and a pile-up of curls? I for one am absolutely up for it.