October 01, 2015

Different hairstyles from the 16th Century & Information

 I found a really good book in the library called 'Fashions in hair - The  first 5000 years that documented the different styles from around the world within the 16th century.

The information was interesting that I took from this.

The first metal hair pins were used in England in 1545.

Mid century hair was mostly turned up and back over padding to create fullness, in the last quarter of the century the hair was sometimes dressed over wire frames instead of pads to give fullness in the front.

Wigs became popular in the latter half of the century. Queen Elizabeth who had a large collection of wigs favoured tightly curled hair whereas Mary Queen of Scots, who is thought to have had n even large collection of wigs, preferred the winged or horned style with smooth hair.

English ladies of the court powdered or dyed their hair to math that of Elizabeth's natural hair colour. Black hair was not fashionable and dying or bleaching was commonly practiced among fashionable women.

Venetian women would go as far as to sit in the sun for so long bleaching their hair that they would have headaches and nosebleeds, this shows that lighter hair was not only fashionable in England.

From the images within the book you can see the differences between the styles of the rich and poor and influences from different countries, with the Italian women being a lot more extravagant using wire frames.


ref - 

CORSON, R, 2001. Fashions in hair : The first 5000 years. London: Peter Owen.

September 29, 2015

Introduction and project brief



Elizabethan Hair!

Throughout this first project in Hair & Postiche the focus is the Elizabethan era.
I come from a hair background but I have never done any kind of period hair and I am really excited to get started on this!

There are so many technical skills I am looking forward to learning as well as improving current skills I have, my expertise lies in cutting and colouring hair so to do some really extravagant hair designs is really interesting for me and really different to what I'm used to.

Using techniques to create new textures, structures and effects which are no longer used today in everyday life, such as adding rats and padding, decorating with jewels and pearls, creating frizzy hair, who wants frizzy hair these days? Not many people but if they did we would know how to do it!


The outcome of this is to use all the skills learnt over the semester to create our own modern interpretation of an Elizabethan hairdo.

Queen Elizabeth I, associated with Nicholas Hilliard, circa 1575 - NPG 190 - © National Portrait Gallery, London
HILLIARD .N., c.1575. Queen Elizabeth I [digital image][Viewed on 29th sept 2015] Available from: http://images.npg.org.uk/800_800/7/4/mw02074.jpg