(Short haired Brat Prince! Read a soft, sweet fanfic a while ago where he had cut his hair short and goodness I loved that idea. Wish I could find the fanfic again. It was… fiiiine.)
Canonically, his hair is first (and arguably best) described here:
“He stared at the vampire’s full black hair, […] the curls that barely touched the edge of the white collar.” – Interview with the Vampire
^But he might have trimmed it that night, he did dress up for the interview, too! So he did pay some attention to his appearance.
I can’t recall anywhere in canon that Louis wears a hair ribbon/tie, which would give us that it’s at least long enough for that, so I don’t think it’s necessarily even that long.
Re: Brad!Louis hair: When I read IWTV for the first time it was the summer before the movie came out; they were already teasing about the movie, we knew who was playing Louis, and I’d seen Brad in other things and then saw the movie itself, so I admit that Brad!Louis influenced my headcanon of him in the beginning; I would have answered Brad!Louis then. Especially bc I have wavy-curly hair myself and had fought it most of my childhood, so Louis’ hair being described as silky was my idea of manageable (straight, slightly wavy) hair!
^And this can’t be an accident that they included this very blatant non-consensual fondling of Louis’ hair right when he’s about to be punished by Santiago & Co.
Since that time, I’ve read plenty of fanfic and seen plenty of fanart that depicts Louis with varying hair lengths and textures, and after private debates with @wicked-felina, I accepted canon!Louis hair as preferable, but really, I love it all. I have an ability to enjoy
contradictory
canon and fanfic, parallel processing them both.
Most recently I’ve been very supportive of Ezra Miller’s hair from Madame Bovary as Louis hair. It’s full, meaning VOLUME, it’s more wavy at the top and curlier further down, and just long enough to touch his collar:
so like i was curious and sketched louis with long hair. same hair type and face i usually draw him with, just longer strands—but he ended up looking more like a nicki?? and that already goes against everything i believe in bc nicki and louis are two very separate ppl stfu lestat
so then i decided to try the brad pitt hair, but with my already-very-feminine-art-style he just became somebody’s bitchy sister?? ?
how do y’all do it lol
Louis can be like a bitchy sister sometimes, so you’re not wrong… he’s Claudia’s (and others…) bitchy older brother, technically!
There’s similarities between Nicolas and Louis, and when Lestat says they’re like twins, he emphasizes the similarity in their personalities:
I fell fatally in love with Louis, a young dark-haired bourgeois planter, graceful of speech and fastidious of manner, who seemed in his cynicism and self destructiveness the very twin of Nicolas. (TVL)
The hair Brad!Louis had will always have a place in my heart, long and Barbie-like, almost chestnut color (I think Brad himself called it “Lion King” hair”)! I don’t remember why it was that long, there’s some story out there about how Brad insisted on keeping it long bc it had to be long in another movie he would be filming close to that time and wouldn’t have time to regrow it, or that it was a decision made by Neil Jordan or someone else in charge *shrugs*
BUT ANYWAY I wouldn’t trample on anyone’s depictions of Louis, #Your Headcanon May Vary, and all that! Give us more, we are insatiable ❤
Aw, thanks! Re: the braided hair, I think there’s some fanon about the braids symbolizing smtg, too. Can’t find it. But hair in general was a big deal… CONVENIENTLY I just saw this post with this comment on it:
See the thing is in Norse culture long hair was a sign of status. When the vikings brought back slaves they would cut their hair off. It was a symbolic loss of freedom. For Thor, royalty, the crown prince to have his hair cut off it was a sign of loss and humiliation.
That person might know more about the meaning behind braids specifically in Norse culture, and is invited to comment on this post 😀
To make this a VC-related answer too bc you know I can’t help myself… Claudia is shown with her hair up when she is trying to look more like the adult she is inside, and cutting it won’t do in movie!IWTV bc it would instantly grow back.
[X I went to the trouble of giffing out FOUR clips for this memeything it behooves you to at LEAST check it out]
BUT ANYWAY I loved Ragnarok! All the not-Thor characters were great, too. The Grandmaster, Valkyrie, HELA OMG, Hulk, LOKI, Heimdall! So much humor and a lot of heart. Of course, as a child of the 80s the film spoke to me aesthetically, too.
The Thor fandom ppl are some of the kindest and most welcoming fandom ppl I’ve met on this site! I could never abandon my VC ppl but… Thor… *dreamy sigh*
Cutting Armand’s hair every night isn’t something new. He does it on his own sometimes, and he accommodates Daniel’s giddy, childish curiosity about it on those nights, too. It starts just with scissors, and then Daniel teaches him about electric clippers, and then it turns into crewcuts and flattops and elaborate patterns carved in. Daniel sometimes touches the tufts of hair that land in the sink and on the floor, and he rolls the strands between his fingers in rapt fascination.
“It doesn’t… feel like real hair,” he says one night. Mohawk tonight, and Armand runs a hand down his shorn scalp, just above the sideburn left behind, and even on a vampire it feels soft like peach fuzz. Daniel pulls a long lock from the sink and wraps it tight around his knuckle until his fingertip turns white.
“What do you mean, Daniel?”
“I don’t know, it feels…” unnatural. “Different.”
He shrugs and drops it, then touches the shaved side of Armand’s head, as well. He scratches behind Armand’s ear and it elicits a head tilt and a smile and soft purr.
“Hey, Armand?”
His eyes are closed and his head is still tilted towards Daniel’s hand, nuzzling the warmth in his palm. “Mmm?”
“Can we try to dye it? Do you think it would take?”
They start with a strip test. Daniel runs out and buys the bleach during the day so that they can try immediately when Armand wakes up. At first it’s just a streak that comes up from his forehead and curls around his face. It takes longer than it should on regular hair, but they’re not worried about the damage it might cause, and Armand doesn’t seem to feel it burning where it’s too low against his scalp. Hours later and it’s done and they can’t stop touching it. Daniel can’t stop combing his fingers through it and marveling at the way it twists in with the other curls. Armand keeps it for three nights before he cuts it off and starts again.
Then it’s his whole head one night, and it takes hours for the auburn to burn down to a pale yellow, almost white. Daniel inspects it every night, curious to know if the Dark Gift will restore the stripped cells and pleased to learn that it does not. The hair still feels unnatural but doesn’t feel damaged the way human hair would. Several times, he catches Armand frozen in place, staring at himself in the mirror with his knuckles against his mouth, and it’s an expression he doesn’t know how to read.
“Can I straighten it?” he asks one night, and It takes hours and way too much hair spray because the curls keep creeping back into place, and eventually Daniel settles for snapping a quick Polaroid before they all pop back in, so that he can have this one memento of the ten minutes Armand had straight blonde hair. They try it again a few nights later with Aqua Net in an aerosol can and wind up with some approximation of Siousxie hair, and even though Daniel thinks it looks cute, Armand mumbles something about being too flammable and washes it out as soon as he can.
And finally there’s the trip to Manic Panic on St. Marks, and the cat hisses at them when they come in, and Armand stares at it coldly as his skin gleams in the ugly fluorescent light, and the girls behind the counter delight in advising them on all the best colors, and they’re nervous, they can feel something is off but can’t figure out what, but they’re still drawn to the danger, as seduced by it as Daniel is. He and Armand leave with one of every color.
Daniel tries a purple on himself, and his hair is light enough that it takes without bleach, and he’s stained the tops of his ears and the corner of his forehead. Armand goes with a dark green. The excess never permeates his skin, because nothing really ever does, and afterward Daniel can’t stop staring at the way it lights up the amber color of his eyes.
But Daniel’s fades after a few washes, and he stares at the way the color tints the shampoo bubbles, and the way it rinses and drips through his fingers. Stark and vivid against the white porcelain tub. And he sees the way it dissolves, night after night, from something lively and exciting to something dull, while Armand’s stays as bright and vital as ever.
And when he’s tired of it, Armand shaves his hair off so that it’ll grow back normal. And Daniel’s remains a fucking mess.
Yes, if you buy this post right here, (which I do, and I’m also going to rebagel it bc why haven’t I yet? Maybe it’s buried in the queue…), in which @gojiro informs us that:
“…mirrors used to be backed with a reflective layer of silver — which, as the metal of purity, would not ‘interact’ with Vampires, who are the Devil’s work. However, modern mirrors have used aluminum as their reflective backing for many years now — and aluminum is not a ‘picky’ metal at all…”
So yes you may headcanon Armand as winning the Ugly Sweater Contest by standing in front of Lestat w/ a mirror as shown above by @superhiki!
…but I also really like the “hair dying parties with other vampires cause they can’t see what they’re doing in the mirror.” which still works for the vampires of What We Do in the Shadows, who live in the modern era, and can’t see their reflection in mirrors (but they can see it in photographs, IDK I JUST REALLY LIKE THE DYE PARTY IDEA so as Tim Gunn would say, “Make it work.”)
I-want-my-IWTV 