Tonight is the season three premiere of Girls and we're psyched to see how Hannah and Adam's relationship has progressed and what has become of Jessa. But what we, as expert decoders of the emotional nuances of a beauty look, are even more psyched about is another 11 episodes of story-telling through the medium of hair.

Never are we more in tune with what Hannah, Marnie, Shoshanna and Jessa are thinking than when we consider what their hairstyle is saying to us. Over the last two seasons the show's hair department head, Sherry Heart, has become adept at translating whatever type of emotional angst is troubling New York's most eclectic group of friends and presenting it via a collection of creative hair looks.

Last season brought us the follicular gems that were Shoshanna's elaborate donut and fascinator combo (episode one) and Hannah's swansong DIY Carey Mulligan hack job (episode 10). Who can even imagine what season three might throw up - Jessa getting some GHDs and Marnie with an undercut? We can but hope... 

1. Season 1, episode 3

In a bid to impress the unimpressible Adam, Hannah backcombs her already unruly hair into a giant gothic bouffant reminiscent of an early nineties teen flick (when she asks ‘how do I look?’, Charlie replies in a deadpan tone, ‘like you’re going to put a Hex on some popular girls’). Her hair is trying so hard to be avant garde and catch Adam’s eye, but it’s just not very Hannah is it?

2. Season 1, episode 7

When Jessa persuades the girls to go a warehouse party in a dodgy part of Brooklyn, Marnie goes styled more like she’s attending a bar mitzvah than an illegal rave. Her hair coiffed into an uber-neat wavy side pony which just screams ‘I don’t fit in’. When they unexpectedly bump into Charlie and his new bohemian girlfriend Audrey, Marnie has one of her famous princess hissy fits but still not a hair falls out of place.

3: Season 1, episode 10

Marnie’s slowly unravelling and there’s no crueller way to do this than tampering with her usually impeccably groomed hair. At Jessa’s surprise wedding she shows up with a fussy pin curl perm that prompts Elijah to comment ,‘Hello JLo at the Grammys’. Later she gets wrecked, eats cake with her hands and gets off with the fat and unfunny wedding officiant while a stunned Charlie looks on.

4: Season 2, episode 1

Shoshanna, queen of a YouTube hair tutorial, is invited to Hannah and Elijah’s housewarming party where she desperately wants to impress Ray. How? With an incredible coiled up-do and a retro fascinator, that’s how. She naively wears her heart, quite literally, on her head.

5: Season 2, episode 3

Marnie’s got a new job and starts to break out of her good-girl box as predatory modern artist Booth Jonathan starts paying her all sorts of attention. As a result Marnie sheds her perfect but boring Kate Middleton mane and ups her raunch factor with a dose of mussed-up texture.

6: Season 2, episode 7

Eternal commitment-phobe Jessa journeys home to confront her loser hippy dad on his lack of parental skills. In a particularly poignant scene where she tells him what an awful father he’s been, Jessa wears her hair in a tightly plaited side braid, rather than her usual bohoey flowing style, and seems more childlike and vulnerable than the Jessa we’re used to.

7:  Season 2, episode 9

Shoshanna‘s breaking up with Ray who she loves, but only in the way that ‘she feels sorry for a monkey’. Her hair, which is usually intricately sculpted like a professional dancer is uncharacteristically loose and unkempt, all but for two tiny braids clipped away from her forehead. She’s spent and emotionally drained by Ray’s constant negativity. Hell, she doesn’t even have the energy to do her hair anymore. This hairstyle is a cry for help. 

8. Season 2, episode 8

Marnie’s emotional crisis when she finds out Charlie’s taken Audrey to Rome is wholly evident in the saggy bunches she steps out in in episode 8. If hair could be depressed, this is how it would look. Fuzzy, dull and devoid of all bounce. Sob.

9. Season 2, episode 10

In the grips of a terrible bout of OCD and procrastinating over writing the eBook that’s she’s finally been contracted to write, Hannah breaks and does a Britney, lopping off her own hair with only a torn out picture of Carey Mulligan and a pair of kitchen scissors for company. It’s about as unhinged as you can get, until she enlists the help of her odd neighbour Laird to finish off the back, and then it gets even worse. Car crash hair styling at its best.

10. Season 3, episode 1

It’s no secret amongst Girls fans that Jessa’s spiral of self-destruction finally lands her in rehab, though her hair still looks better than ours does on most days, even when in the grip of a supposed heroin addiction. By the looks of it, Jessa and her flaxen folk singer hair won’t be down and out for long.

11. Season 3, episode 1

Hannah’s put the Carey Mulligan incident behind her and actually, is rocking her most styled look of the entire show so far, a cute gamine crop. She’s got a job, Adam’s moved in and finally things are starting to come good for her. Or are they….?