Are Banana Clips Back? We (Kinda Sorta Maybe) Hope So

We have a love/hate relationship with the '80s. There are some trends we gladly welcome back (studs, high-waisted everything, and ankle boots, to name a few), and some we would gladly banish to the past (shoulder pads, acid wash, sky-blue eyeshadow). And then, there are the ones we just plain forgot about, either due to the trauma they caused us many, many moons ago, or because it's been 30 years and our memories aren't quite what they used to be.

Case in point: the banana clip. This plastic claw was ubiquitous in our youth and used to create many an artfully disheveled, undone updo. But, all good things must come to an end and the handy little hair helper was soon forgotten and replaced by bra headbands and plastic butterfly mini clips in the '90s.

So, you can imagine our surprise when we saw a few girls on the subway last week sporting the retro hair accessory. These stylish ladies had created some pretty epic updos using the oft-ridiculed clip, and we were in awe. It also left us wondering: Is the banana clip back? Could it be?

We saw a brief, ironic resurgence of the scrunchie a few years back, and as far as we can tell, it looks like the banana clip is next up on the nostalgia list. We know they never quite went away (you can still find some plastic, faux-tortoiseshell clips collecting dust on the shelves at your local drugstore), but we haven't seen anyone outside of the occasional awkward suburbanite or middle school girl actually wearing them. Color us intrigued. We'll be interested to see if this is something the fashionable masses start embracing again or if this was just a weird, morning-commute anomaly.