‘Jersey Shore’ a style inspiration

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — Hair gel and hair extensions, tanning and True Religion jeans, Ed Hardy T-shirts and eyebrow threading. It’s fashion, “Jersey Shore”-style.

MTV’s hit reality show put the spotlight on the style of a group of 20-something Italian-Americans, self-professed “guidos” and “guidettes,” as they partied and fist-pumped their way through a Seaside Heights, N.J., summer. And now their style — heavy on gravity-defying hair and deeply revealing tops — is catching on among a non-“guido” audience that’s tuned in not just for the drama but also to study the cast’s particular, and sometimes peculiar, fashion choices.

“They’re fist-pumping. They’re doing their hair like us now, dressing like us,” Pauly Delvecchio, who goes by Pauly D on the show, told NBC’s “Today” show last week. “We obviously did something right.”

Pauly D’s blowout hairdo helps define the style, along with Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi’s white hair-clipped pouf. Jenni “JWOWW” Farley has announced her own clothing line, and Mike “The Situation” Sorrentino walked the red carpet at the Grammys displaying his famous abs.

Zach Vujic, 15, has learned lately just what kind of dedication it takes to get Pauly D’s hair. The 10th-grader from Stoney Creek, Ontario, got his own version of the cut, with short hair on bottom, topped by hair a couple of inches long sticking straight up in spikes seemingly shellacked into place.

Zach, whose ethnic background is Serbian, says he got the Pauly D cut in late January. Since then, he’s been getting up 25 minutes early for school, at 6:25 a.m., so he has time to perfect the style.

It’s worth it, Zach said.

“I’ve noticed now when I go places with the haircut, people just stop and look at me. No one else has it,” he said.

Another plus, according to Zach: Girls like it.

Lauren Lewis, 19, a nursing student at Laguardia College in Queens, N.Y. — who is Jamaican, Italian and Irish, with a little Lithuanian and British thrown in — says she looks to Snooki and JWOWW for tips when she goes out clubbing.

“I want to be Snooki or JWOWW. Outgoing. I’m not really that outgoing,” she said. “I look at them for inspiration.”

Lewis has tried several times to reproduce Snooki’s hairstyle, which is achieved through teasing, hair spray and a big white hair clip. But Lewis has curly hair and has been able to do it only once, with a lot of help from her friends.

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