How a Sleek Little Hair Pin Transformed My Sad Mom Bun

I’ve encountered lots of mom-bun alternatives, none of them particularly refined. Plastic claw clips and scrunchies are back, according to fashion, but they’re both clunky and casual. I’ll leave ’90s accessories to the cool kids.

The Day Rate Beauty Petite Power Pin is my affordably elegant fix for low-maintenance hair. It doesn’t look like much: an oblong U of nylon-coated steel with a few ripples on the tines. But this thing means business. Thanks to its steel core, it has absolutely no wiggle or give, and it doesn’t snap or buckle with tighter hairstyles. The nylon exterior helps it glide into hair smoothly, with no snags or snarls. And it doesn’t crack or chip at the bottom of a bag.

The Petite Power Pin is almost effortless, full stop. I have wavy hair that’s medium thickness and length, and I style it with the Petite Power Pin in a few ways, listed below in order of ease. All take less than 10 seconds at the most.

The Mom-Bun Adjacent

For this style reminiscent of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, I just twist my hair into a low cluster at the nape of my neck, holding all my strands with one hand. With the other hand, I jab the pin, tines downward, into the mass, nudging back and forth to get some hold. That’s it.

The Half-Up Hero

A close cousin to the above, only here I’m twisting just the hair that’s above my ears into a bun. Because I’m working with less hair, more of the pin shows, which is pretty. (Here’s a 41-second YouTube tutorial.)

The French-Twist Fancy

Dior’s creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri sent this neat style down the runway this past fall. It might take a couple of tries, but each attempt is quick, and the result is more than worth the effort. I gather my hair with one hand at my nape and then tightly twist up my ends with the other hand, pulling vertically as I go. I tuck the loose ends downward behind the roll of hair and then neatly guide the pin to secure it, as in this 31-second video tutorial. Alternatively, I can go for a ’90s red-carpet updo and jam the pin into the twist, leaving the ends out.

All three updos are just as secure as a mom bun, keeping my hair out of my face when I’m ripping underdogs at the playground or shaking rocks out of Crocs. But I look and feel better wearing them.

I haven’t tried other pins exactly like this one because I haven’t found any. The famous French hairstylist Odile Gilbert makes similar metallic hair pins—hers are curved and more expensive—but the site doesn’t ship to the US. I’m curious about the plastic French pins from Machete but not curious enough to drop $35 on something that will inevitably chip, snap, and hit the landfill. And The Hair Edit, a brand at Target, just started making the Large French Hair Pin, which looks promising. It comes in only one, 5-inch length, though, and its flat, wide shape is a little more crude.