There are mornings when the hair cooperates and mornings when putting on a headband feels like a perfectly acceptable conclusion to the whole situation. Either way, it works. Hair can stay down, go into a ponytail, or end up in whatever arrangement happens before leaving the house, with the headband adding enough to make even a very ordinary hairstyle feel a little more put together.

Somewhere along the way, headbands made the jump from something mostly practical to something worth choosing for the outfit. Color and print can peek through without taking over, which makes them easy to work into the clothes already in regular rotation. And unlike a hairstyle that looked promising in the bathroom mirror and fell apart twenty minutes later, the headband is pretty committed to the plan.

A favorite headband has a way of earning repeat appearances. Maybe it works particularly well with a certain dress, gets pulled out whenever a little more color feels right, or simply becomes the one that looks good often enough to stop requiring much thought. It doesn’t need a special occasion or an elaborate hairstyle behind it — sometimes wearing the headband really was a good call.