The Robert Smith Rat

For those of you who do not really know what the Robert Smith Rat is, it is a style which has been seen on Robert Smith (lead singer of The Cure) as well as Edward Scissor Hands. Basically the hair is all ratted and teased up so it stands up really tall and is kind of stringy. Even thought it is mostly seen of guys, it also looks really nice on girls too. It doesn't work for everyone, but if it does it gives a very sexy "Just dragged myself from my coffin" look. I will post pictures of it at different leingths and levels of ratting.

This style tends to work best with shorter hair and I would not attempt it if you hair is much past your shoulders. It also pays to have lots of layers for this unless your hair is really short. I have never tried it with my hair all one leingth so I don't know that it would work so well.

Instructions:

If this is your first time doing this style you are going to want to try it when you have a lot of free time to wash it out if you do not like it. It took me a few tries to get it right.

The tools you are going to need are a blow dryer, some really strong spiking gel, and really strong hair spray (don't even mess with the wimpy stuff). I don't generally need a comb or brush for this, but you might want one for teasing if you are trying to get this really big. I can't tease with a comb well so I skip that part.

While your hair is wet you want to take a fairly good amount of the gel and work it through your hair. Make sure to get it from roots all the way to the tips. If you want to be sure it is even you can comb your hair to distribute it.

Flip your hair upside down and blowdry your hair until it is dry. Flipping your hair upsidedown is what gives you a lot of the lift you are going for on top. FInger comb your hair so it keeps some of the stringyness and is not too neat looking. the blowdrying helps to give it that tangled up look if you work it right.

Once your hair is dry to want to tip your hair right side up and make sure that your part (if any) is in the right spot reletivly speaking. Since I don't have a part with this style I don't do this.

Flip your upside down again and spray all through it with the hair spray while upside down. You want to do a lot of scrunching and ratting while upsidedown and spray it all in place.

Tip your hair rightside up again and check it in the mirror. If you don't have as much lift and tangle as you want you can tip upside down again or just lift up sections of hair with one hand and spray all through them. This style takes a lot of hair spray and you have to be carful not to use too much of it at the roots because that makes you look a little too gross.

Once you have got your hair all ratted up and arranged to taste you can through in glitter or cob webs and fake spiders or whatever you feel like. Barettes tend to weight hair down so I do not use them with this style, but it is entirally a matter of taste.

Pictures of this style at different leingths: