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Discussion Post: The Red Circle
This week, the canon story we’re looking at is The Red Circle and the chosen topic is Hairstyles, Beards and Moustaches.
A few facts:
✂ Though new hair products were always on the market, the basic hairdressing items… did not change much throughout the Victorian era. Equipped with brush, combs, curling tongs, false hair, pins, and pomade and armed with a variety of trimmings – such as beads, ribbons, feathers, and fresh flowers – a lady could create almost any style from 1837 through 1901. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ To curl hair, Victorian women employed curling tongs. These were heated directly in the fire and, as a result, it was difficult to control the temperature. Hair was frequently scorched or burned off completely. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ One… thing that many Victorian women did with curling irons was cut the hair around their faces very short, and then crimp it, leaving a sort of curly fringe around their faces. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ False hair came in a variety of forms, including invisible tufts, comb tufts, plaits, ringlets, and pads. Used to add height, thickness, or simply as fashionable adornment, false hair was meant to blend seamlessly with one’s own hair color… For an exact match, many women made their own hairpieces. In her book Compacts and Cosmetics: Beauty from Victorian Times to the Present Day, author Madeleine Marsh explains:
“Dressing table sets included a ‘hair tidy’ (a screw-top container with a hole in the lid) which was used as a receptacle for what must have been a considerable amount of hair from the brush. This could then be combed out and transformed into additional hairpieces (familiarly known as ‘rats’) – cheaper and a much better colour match than buying in the false ringlets and pads necessary to create the more complicated Victorian and Edwardian hairstyles.” [Mimi Matthews]
✂ During the late 1830s and into the 1840s, hair was usually parted in the center, pinned up or braided in the back, and then coiled or curled into ringlets on each side of the face. Hair was worn close to the head and frequently smoothed down to completely cover the ears. The styles during these years were plain and could be severe looking, but they were very much in keeping with the stark, Gothic gowns that were fashionable at the beginning of the Victorian era. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Women's hair styles tended to reflect the lines of their gowns. As skirts were drawn back in the mid to late 1860s, so the hair was also drawn up and back to reveal the ears… but kept flat on top, with curls or a small twist at the back of the head reflecting the back interest on the dress. With the first bustles in the early 1870s the hair was lifted higher, sloping upward from forehead to occiput, then cascading to the shoulders in lavish twisted plaits (braids) or curls, or both, or occasionally worn in a chignon. [Joan Nunn]
✂ [In] the 1850s and 1860s, hairstyles were much less severe. Hair became fuller and more feminine. It was plaited, twisted into large rolls, or swept back into a chignon or a hairnet. Hairnets, including the popularly advertised “Invisible Hair-Net,” were made of fine silk that was virtually indistinguishable from one’s natural hair. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Hairstyles in the 1870s were longer and fuller, thus necessitating greater use of hairpieces. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ In 1876 The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine announced that the use of false hair was a thing of the past… hair [was] dressed to give a smaller, neat appearance, close and high on the head. A few curls might be arranged to fall from the back of the head to the shoulders in the evening, and the increasingly fashionable, closely-curled fringe… might often be false; a false fringe would avoid cutting the front hair...
The small neat hairstyle remained in fashion through the late 1870s and into the 1880s, when the hair was scraped up into a bun on top of the head. The curled fringe was reduced to small tendrils on the forehead. By the 1890s it had disappeared altogether, and the hair was again dressed back from the forehead but fuller and softer, possibly over pads to give a more bouffant style, still with the twist or bun on top of the head. [Joan Nunn]
✂ By the 1880s, hairstyles had grown higher. The back and crown were often plaited, twisted, and coiled, sometimes into loops tied with ribbons… The front of the hair was worn loosely waved or arranged into short curls or puffs. It was also becoming popular to wear a fringe of hair (or bangs) cut across the forehead. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ 1890s through 1901: By the end of the Victorian era, hairstyles had reverted back to those intricate coiffures popular in the early 1830s… These full, feminine styles, often appearing to be piled up on top of the head in voluptuous disarray, were typified by the hairstyle known as the “Gibson Girl.” Inspired by the satirical cartoons of Charles Dana Gibson, the Gibson Girl hairstyle was all the rage during the 1890s and early 20th century. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ The Gibson Girl was often portrayed as wearing one of the following hairstyles:
A chignon: This simple style involves tying the hair in a knot at the nape of the neck.
The top bun: A loose bun tied at the very top of the head
The psyche knot: Very similar to a high, normal bun [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ Throughout the half century [1850-1900], bonnets and hats, apart from sporting styles, were lavishly trimmed, and hair was invariably decorated with flowers, jewels or feathers for evening. [Joan Nunn]
✂ Towards the end of the 19th century, the Marcel Wave invented by Marcel Grateau’s “curling iron,” became a popular hairstyle which enabled to create a more natural looking wave as opposed to a curl. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ In the Victorian era, women generally wore their hair long, usually atop the head. Yet short hair was not uncommon, as in the “titus” hairstyle in which hair was cut close around the face and worn in curls. And as long hair could be used to make wigs and hairpieces, middle-class women sometimes even cut off their locks and sold them, as Jo March did in Little Women (1868-1869). [Leslie S. Klinger, a note to COPP in the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes]
✂ Long, loose hair… was only appropriate for children… ...most respectable grown women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ Queen Victoria was a fashion icon in her own right. In the early years of her reign, she inspired the “Apollo Loop” in which a plain or coiled plait of false hair was attached onto wires to create eye-catching loops worn vertically on top of the head. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ In her later years, Queen Victoria seems to have opted mostly for the simplest possible hairstyle, and is more often than not photographed with just a bit of tightly pulled back hair peeping out from under a veil, bonnet, or hat. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ ...just because a hairstyle was described in a 19th century fashion magazine does not mean that the average Victorian woman wore her hair that way. As in every era, there was a gulf between the fashions of the working class and those of the upper classes. In addition, there were plenty of women (just as there are today) who kept the same hairstyle for decades. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Men wore their hair fairly short throughout this half century [1850-1900], from just over the top of the ears at the start to a moderately close cut in the 1890s. A centre parting running from forehead to nape was fashionable in the 1870s, but there was considerable individual choice in the way the hair was combed -- parted slightly off-centre, at the side or brushed straight back. [Joan Nunn]
✂ This short hair was often accompanied by various forms of facial hair including moustaches, side-burns, and full beards.
Victorian men used different kinds of waxes and oils to keep their facial hair in shape, including wood frames used at night to keep their moustaches shaped. A clean-shaven face did not come back into fashion until the end of the 1880s and early 1890s. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ Despite the mistaken belief that men only curl their mustaches with wax, men in the Victorian era absolutely used curling irons to style their facial hair. In fact, one of my friends owns a tiny, vintage non-electric mustache curling iron. [Austin Sirkin]
✂ Dr [Alun] Withey said: "The mid-nineteenth century was a golden age for beards. After well over a century of being beardless, British men rediscovered a love for their facial hair. But growing a beard was much more than a fashion fad for Victorian men. It was in fact seen as an essential component of a man's strength and vigour.”
He added: “We think of beard oils and waxes as a modern thing, but there was a lively market for beard 'product' in the nineteenth century, including creams and lotions to soften and scent the beard, with others encouraging it to grow thick. Unfortunate men who were unable to grow theirs were either forced to slather on creams (like the so-called 'beard generator') or to buy one of the many false moustaches and whiskers that were becoming available. Some innovative inventors even patented mechanical devices using springs, to fix false whiskers firmly to the head.” [Quoted on the University of Exeter website.]
✂ From the late 1860s to the 1890s the majority of men presented a hirsute appearance, with the exception of aesthetes who believed that a clean-shaven face gave them a more fastidious and aesthetic appearance.
Sideburns, allowed to grow further down the face, developed into a variety of side-whiskers - broad and bushy 'mutton-chop' whiskers, -or long and combed out, known as Piccadilly weepers or Dundrearys (from the character of Lord Dundreary in Tom Taylor's play Our American Cousin) during the 1870s. Side whiskers might be worn with or without a moustache, as might the fringe beard running round under the chin, in the late 1850s and early 1860s…
Full beards covering the chin, combined with a moustache, were cut in many different ways -- full and very bushy, rounded and neat like General Grant's in America, or slightly more pointed like that of the Prince of Wales in England. A narrow pointed beard from just under the lower lip to an inch or so below the chin, known as a goatee, was worn by Napoleon III with a long moustache waxed out straight at the sides. A waxed moustache turned up at the ends was associated with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and might be referred to as a 'Kaiser' moustache. By the late 1880s and the 1890s the clean-shaven face was coming back into fashion… But many older men continued to wear a beard or moustache well into the new century. [Joan Nunn]
✂ Though modern culture often associates moustaches with men of the Victorian Era, Susan Walton shows that at the start of the Victorian Era facial hair was "viewed with distaste" and that the moustache was considered the mark of an artist or revolutionary, both of which remained on the social fringe at the time. This is supported by the fact that only one member of parliament sported facial hair from the years 1841-1847. However by the 1860s, this changes and moustaches become wildly popular even among distinguished men but by the end of the century facial hair became passé once more.
Though one cannot be entirely sure as to the cause of such changes, Walton speculates that the rise of the facial hair trend was due largely in part because the impending war against Russia, and the belief that moustaches and beards projected a more 'manly' image, which was brought about by the so-called 'rebranding' of the British military and the rehabilitation of military virtues. Moustaches became a defining trait of the British soldier, as even late as 1908 no enlisted soldier was permitted to shave his upper lip. [Wikipedia]
✂ The popularity of the beard in Victorian Great Britain has often been attributed to the Crimean War (1853-1856). This war consisted of a number of armed conflicts between Russia and Turkey, as well as Turkey’s allies (England, France and Sardinia). While stationed in the Crimean Peninsula, many men in the British Army began to grow beards. Partly a fashion statement, long “Crimean beards” (pictured below) also had the practical advantage of keeping soldiers warm in the local winter environment. When the war ended and British troops returned home to England, the public adopted the look with great enthusiasm. Although Crimean War veterans can be credited with the resulting popularization of the bearded masculine look, interest in growing beards was already starting to gain momentum within academic and political circles back home. However, with the return of successful soldiers sporting thick beards, the style became a common fixture of the modern, masculine Victorian man for approximately the next fifty years. [Brendan Cull]
✂ ...uniform regulation in the British Army between the years 1860 and 1916 stipulated that every soldier should have a moustache. Command No. 1,695 of the King’s Regulations read:
The hair of the head will be kept short. The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip…
Although the act of shaving one’s upper lip was trivial in itself, it was considered a breach of discipline. If a soldier were to do this, he faced disciplinary action by his commanding officer which could include imprisonment… [Today I Found Out]
✂ The long and short of it was that being clean shaven was for weaklings. This was proved by the British army, who, having occupied India, had seen the natives mock their pale, smooth and lady-like beardless faces. The British decided the best way to fit in and gain the trust of the Indian people was to copy them. So began Britain’s… opinion that facial hair was a symbol of masculinity.
By 1884 the opinion that facial hair was required by anyone not of the same disposition as Oscar Wilde was complete, and to prove it there was even a play entitled ‘The Moustache Movement’ which made great fooling of the ‘fact’ that all bare-faced men looked alike, whether they be ‘Duke or Dustman’. [amateur_casual]
✂ ...as medical historian Alun Withey writes on his blog, the Victorian resurgence of the big, bushy beard had to do with more than just fashion.
“By 1850,” writes Withey, “doctors were beginning to encourage men to wear beards as a means of warding off illness.”
As Oldstone-Moore points out, the Victorian obsession with air quality saw the beard promoted as a sort of filter. A thick beard, it was reasoned, would capture the impurities before they could get inside the body. Others saw it as a means of relaxing the throat, especially for those whose work involved public speaking. Some doctors were even recommending that men grew beards to avoid sore throats...
The mid-19th century had a lot going on, medically: the germ theory of disease was slowly gaining ground, and with it the understanding that illness could come from wee beasties. In England, the mid-1800s was also a particularly bad time for air pollution… That people might consider a beard a helpful filter against airborne ailments doesn't seem so ludicrous.
The reality, of course, says Lauren Friedman for Business Insider, is that beards are more a medical risk than a cure:
One recent study in Behavioral Ecology points out that "hair on the face and body are potential localized breeding sites for disease-carrying ectoparasites." And a London dermatologist told The Guardian that since "facial hair is more likely to trap bacteria and food... there is actually more chance of infection with a beard than a clean-shaven face." [Colin Schultz]
✂ By the end of the 19th Century, beards were finally out of fashion, except amongst older, conservative men. The young man’s friend was the discovery of bacteria – and newspaper reports that linked germs with beards. Throughout Europe and North America, new rules were made to prevent bearded men from handling food... [Lucinda Hawksley]
✂ ...by the 1890s, it became common practice to shave beards while patients were hospitalized. As germ theory was accepted and shared publically, facial hair became problematic. Research showed that beards could harbour bacteria which might lead to the spread of infectious diseases. For example, spittle caught in the hairs of the beard could contain tuberculosis. With contact, the disease could be passed from person to person. As a result, at the beginning of the twentieth century, hospitals in Britain banned beards altogether and nurses were expected to remove facial hair… as part of their health care duties. [Brendan Cull]
Some useful resources:
The Dictionary of Victorian London This is the main index. Click on ‘Clothing & Fashions’ - ‘Hair and Facial Hair’
A Victorian Lady’s Guide To Hairdressing By Mimi Matthews, on her website.
A Victorian Lady’s Guide To Hair Care By Mimi Matthews, on her website.
Victorian Women's Fashion, 1850-1900: Hairstyles By Joan Nunn, on the Victorian Web.
Victorian Men's Fashions, 1850-1900: Hair By Joan Nunn, on the Victorian Web.
The Hair at the Nineteenth Century By Pablo Briand, on The History of the World of Hair.
Hair: the styling of society On the Chertsey Museum website.
The great Victorian beard craze By Lucinda Hawksley, on the BBC website.
The moustache: A hairy history By Lucinda Hawksley, on the BBC Global News website.
Moustache On Wikipedia. Only a tiny bit about the Victorian era but interesting.
For Victorian Men, the Mustache Comb was Everything By Sharon Twickler, on Atlas Obscura.
From 1860-1916 the Uniform Regulations for the British Army Required Every Soldier to Have a Moustache On Today I Found Out.
The Victorian "Movember" By amateur_casual, on Sharpologist.
In the Victorian Era, Doctors Prescribed Beards to Help Keep Men Healthy By Colin Schultz, on The Smithsonian.
Victorian beard craze inspired false ‘mechanical’ whiskers On the University of Exeter website.
Beautiful Victorian Hairstyles By Simone Haruko Smith, on Bellatory.
A Hair-Razing History of the Beard: Facial Hair and Men’s Health from the Crimean War to the First World War By Brendan Cull, on Museum of Health Care.
Victorian Hairstyles: a short history, in photos By Kathleen Harris, on WhizzPast.
Victorian Era Hairstyles for Women On Victorian-Era.org
Victorian Hairstyles & Headdresses - 1860s On the Victoriana Magazine.
L-O-N-G Victorian Hair By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Curling Irons By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Styling Ladies’ Hair; American 19th Century By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Ladies’ Hairdressers By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Hair Augmentation By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Hair Indicative of Character By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Era Men’s Hairstyles By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian and Edwardian Hairstyles On The Barrington House Educational Center, L.L.C. website.
Victorian Male Hairstyles On Quickly. Collections of images from other websites. And though the page is labelled ‘Victorian Male Hairstyles’, there are images of women too.
1865-1900: Very long Victorian hair By Alex Q. Arbuckle, on Mashable.
Recreating Hairstyles of the 1890s An article from The Delineator, 1894, on Vintage Victorian.
The Ladies' Page - Health and Beauty By Barbara Onslow, on Victorian Page.
Women’s Edwardian Hairstyles: An Overview On Hair and Makeup Artist Handbook.
The Myth of a Myth: Brushing Your Hair 100 Times On The Pragmatic Costumer.
Beauty / Grooming / Washing By Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman, on This Victorian Life.
Victorian Shampoo Alternatives By Lori Elliott, on Our Heritage of Health.
Edwardian/Victorian Hair Care Tips from the Famous Aline Vallandri By Elizabeth, on A Merry Rose. Most of us have never heard of Aline Vallandri. But, in her day, Mademoiselle Vallandri was a famous singer who was also noted for her beautiful hair… In 1912, she shared her hair care secrets with "Every Woman's Encyclopaedia"...
A Victorian Lady's Toilette By Kathleen Bittner-Roth, on History Undressed.
How To Clean Your Hair Brush – Victorian And Edwardian Hair Care By Lina, on Sew Historically.
A Hairy Subject – Secrecy, Shame and Victorian Wigs By Julia Armfield, on the British Library website.
Victorian Men’s Hairstyles & Facial Hair A collection of Victorian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles and facial hair fashion of the time, and a few rather unique hair styles like a man with ringlets. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
Victorian Hairstyles A collection of Victorian photographs ranging from 1855 - 1880’s. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
Edwardian Hairstyles A collection of Edwardian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles of the time, like the Low Pompadour. Hatpin Hairstyle. Side-Swirls. Flapper (The title ‘Flapper’ originally referred to teenage girls who wore their hair in single plait which often terminated in a wide ribbon bow.) & the pompadour. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
The Human Hair Market From In Strange Company, by James Greenwood, 1874, on the Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Victorian Moustache Cup On Today I Found Out.
How to Grow, Curl, and Care for a Handlebar By Austin Sirkin, on Wonder How To.
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century The one-stop blog spot for your Nineteenth Century Mustache needs!
Fuck Yeah Victorian Mustaches On Tumblr.
Victorian Mustaches By Ms. Lou, on The Neo-Victorian Parlour. The photographs on this aren’t loading (for me anyway) but I thought the text was interesting enough to include the link.
The Mustache By Camille Hadley Jones, on Edwardian Promenade.
Victorian Beards: A Pogonology...or something By Daniel Lewis, on Unpretentious Blabberings.
Victorian Era Beards Growing On Victorian-Era.org
Why Victorian Men Had Glorious Beards By Allison Meier, on Hyperallergic.
Beards and Moustaches On the Dictionary of Victorian London.
Awful Occurrence at an Evening Party Punch sketch, Jul.-Dec. 1851.
Barber Instructor and Toilet Manual By Frank C[lyde] Bridgeford. [1904] On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are several download options.
Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture By Galia Ofek. A preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History By Victoria Sherrow. The link should hopefully take you to the Victorian section of the book. But this is a preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
The Ingenious Victorians: Weird and Wonderful Ideas from the Age of Innovation By John Wade. The link should hopefully take you to a bit about electric hairbrushes, but this is a preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories By Leslie S. Klinger. A preview of the book on Google Books. The link should hopefully take you to the Copper Beeches. I only include the link here so you can see the note quoted above in situ.
5 Easy Victorian Inspired Vintage Hairstyles | Tutorial | Kathryn Marie On YouTube. 6 minutes, 29 seconds.
How to GIBSON girl Hair EDWARDIAN/ VICTORIAN vintage RETRO Hairstyle tutorial - Vintagious On YouTube. 5 minutes, 18 seconds.
Edwardian & 1920's style vintage hair 8 videos by Vintagious on YouTube.
The Victorian Beard - by Professor Richard J Evans On YouTube: 9 minutes, 49 seconds. Posted by GreshamCollege. Professor Richard J Evans, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, provides a brief summary of the changing role of facial hair in Victorian Britain.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
A few facts:
✂ Though new hair products were always on the market, the basic hairdressing items… did not change much throughout the Victorian era. Equipped with brush, combs, curling tongs, false hair, pins, and pomade and armed with a variety of trimmings – such as beads, ribbons, feathers, and fresh flowers – a lady could create almost any style from 1837 through 1901. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ To curl hair, Victorian women employed curling tongs. These were heated directly in the fire and, as a result, it was difficult to control the temperature. Hair was frequently scorched or burned off completely. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ One… thing that many Victorian women did with curling irons was cut the hair around their faces very short, and then crimp it, leaving a sort of curly fringe around their faces. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ False hair came in a variety of forms, including invisible tufts, comb tufts, plaits, ringlets, and pads. Used to add height, thickness, or simply as fashionable adornment, false hair was meant to blend seamlessly with one’s own hair color… For an exact match, many women made their own hairpieces. In her book Compacts and Cosmetics: Beauty from Victorian Times to the Present Day, author Madeleine Marsh explains:
“Dressing table sets included a ‘hair tidy’ (a screw-top container with a hole in the lid) which was used as a receptacle for what must have been a considerable amount of hair from the brush. This could then be combed out and transformed into additional hairpieces (familiarly known as ‘rats’) – cheaper and a much better colour match than buying in the false ringlets and pads necessary to create the more complicated Victorian and Edwardian hairstyles.” [Mimi Matthews]
✂ During the late 1830s and into the 1840s, hair was usually parted in the center, pinned up or braided in the back, and then coiled or curled into ringlets on each side of the face. Hair was worn close to the head and frequently smoothed down to completely cover the ears. The styles during these years were plain and could be severe looking, but they were very much in keeping with the stark, Gothic gowns that were fashionable at the beginning of the Victorian era. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Women's hair styles tended to reflect the lines of their gowns. As skirts were drawn back in the mid to late 1860s, so the hair was also drawn up and back to reveal the ears… but kept flat on top, with curls or a small twist at the back of the head reflecting the back interest on the dress. With the first bustles in the early 1870s the hair was lifted higher, sloping upward from forehead to occiput, then cascading to the shoulders in lavish twisted plaits (braids) or curls, or both, or occasionally worn in a chignon. [Joan Nunn]
✂ [In] the 1850s and 1860s, hairstyles were much less severe. Hair became fuller and more feminine. It was plaited, twisted into large rolls, or swept back into a chignon or a hairnet. Hairnets, including the popularly advertised “Invisible Hair-Net,” were made of fine silk that was virtually indistinguishable from one’s natural hair. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Hairstyles in the 1870s were longer and fuller, thus necessitating greater use of hairpieces. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ In 1876 The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine announced that the use of false hair was a thing of the past… hair [was] dressed to give a smaller, neat appearance, close and high on the head. A few curls might be arranged to fall from the back of the head to the shoulders in the evening, and the increasingly fashionable, closely-curled fringe… might often be false; a false fringe would avoid cutting the front hair...
The small neat hairstyle remained in fashion through the late 1870s and into the 1880s, when the hair was scraped up into a bun on top of the head. The curled fringe was reduced to small tendrils on the forehead. By the 1890s it had disappeared altogether, and the hair was again dressed back from the forehead but fuller and softer, possibly over pads to give a more bouffant style, still with the twist or bun on top of the head. [Joan Nunn]
✂ By the 1880s, hairstyles had grown higher. The back and crown were often plaited, twisted, and coiled, sometimes into loops tied with ribbons… The front of the hair was worn loosely waved or arranged into short curls or puffs. It was also becoming popular to wear a fringe of hair (or bangs) cut across the forehead. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ 1890s through 1901: By the end of the Victorian era, hairstyles had reverted back to those intricate coiffures popular in the early 1830s… These full, feminine styles, often appearing to be piled up on top of the head in voluptuous disarray, were typified by the hairstyle known as the “Gibson Girl.” Inspired by the satirical cartoons of Charles Dana Gibson, the Gibson Girl hairstyle was all the rage during the 1890s and early 20th century. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ The Gibson Girl was often portrayed as wearing one of the following hairstyles:
A chignon: This simple style involves tying the hair in a knot at the nape of the neck.
The top bun: A loose bun tied at the very top of the head
The psyche knot: Very similar to a high, normal bun [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ Throughout the half century [1850-1900], bonnets and hats, apart from sporting styles, were lavishly trimmed, and hair was invariably decorated with flowers, jewels or feathers for evening. [Joan Nunn]
✂ Towards the end of the 19th century, the Marcel Wave invented by Marcel Grateau’s “curling iron,” became a popular hairstyle which enabled to create a more natural looking wave as opposed to a curl. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ In the Victorian era, women generally wore their hair long, usually atop the head. Yet short hair was not uncommon, as in the “titus” hairstyle in which hair was cut close around the face and worn in curls. And as long hair could be used to make wigs and hairpieces, middle-class women sometimes even cut off their locks and sold them, as Jo March did in Little Women (1868-1869). [Leslie S. Klinger, a note to COPP in the New Annotated Sherlock Holmes]
✂ Long, loose hair… was only appropriate for children… ...most respectable grown women only wore their hair down in very intimate settings: their bedroom or dressing room, for example. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ Queen Victoria was a fashion icon in her own right. In the early years of her reign, she inspired the “Apollo Loop” in which a plain or coiled plait of false hair was attached onto wires to create eye-catching loops worn vertically on top of the head. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ In her later years, Queen Victoria seems to have opted mostly for the simplest possible hairstyle, and is more often than not photographed with just a bit of tightly pulled back hair peeping out from under a veil, bonnet, or hat. [Simone Haruko Smith]
✂ ...just because a hairstyle was described in a 19th century fashion magazine does not mean that the average Victorian woman wore her hair that way. As in every era, there was a gulf between the fashions of the working class and those of the upper classes. In addition, there were plenty of women (just as there are today) who kept the same hairstyle for decades. [Mimi Matthews]
✂ Men wore their hair fairly short throughout this half century [1850-1900], from just over the top of the ears at the start to a moderately close cut in the 1890s. A centre parting running from forehead to nape was fashionable in the 1870s, but there was considerable individual choice in the way the hair was combed -- parted slightly off-centre, at the side or brushed straight back. [Joan Nunn]
✂ This short hair was often accompanied by various forms of facial hair including moustaches, side-burns, and full beards.
Victorian men used different kinds of waxes and oils to keep their facial hair in shape, including wood frames used at night to keep their moustaches shaped. A clean-shaven face did not come back into fashion until the end of the 1880s and early 1890s. [Chertsey Museum]
✂ Despite the mistaken belief that men only curl their mustaches with wax, men in the Victorian era absolutely used curling irons to style their facial hair. In fact, one of my friends owns a tiny, vintage non-electric mustache curling iron. [Austin Sirkin]
✂ Dr [Alun] Withey said: "The mid-nineteenth century was a golden age for beards. After well over a century of being beardless, British men rediscovered a love for their facial hair. But growing a beard was much more than a fashion fad for Victorian men. It was in fact seen as an essential component of a man's strength and vigour.”
He added: “We think of beard oils and waxes as a modern thing, but there was a lively market for beard 'product' in the nineteenth century, including creams and lotions to soften and scent the beard, with others encouraging it to grow thick. Unfortunate men who were unable to grow theirs were either forced to slather on creams (like the so-called 'beard generator') or to buy one of the many false moustaches and whiskers that were becoming available. Some innovative inventors even patented mechanical devices using springs, to fix false whiskers firmly to the head.” [Quoted on the University of Exeter website.]
✂ From the late 1860s to the 1890s the majority of men presented a hirsute appearance, with the exception of aesthetes who believed that a clean-shaven face gave them a more fastidious and aesthetic appearance.
Sideburns, allowed to grow further down the face, developed into a variety of side-whiskers - broad and bushy 'mutton-chop' whiskers, -or long and combed out, known as Piccadilly weepers or Dundrearys (from the character of Lord Dundreary in Tom Taylor's play Our American Cousin) during the 1870s. Side whiskers might be worn with or without a moustache, as might the fringe beard running round under the chin, in the late 1850s and early 1860s…
Full beards covering the chin, combined with a moustache, were cut in many different ways -- full and very bushy, rounded and neat like General Grant's in America, or slightly more pointed like that of the Prince of Wales in England. A narrow pointed beard from just under the lower lip to an inch or so below the chin, known as a goatee, was worn by Napoleon III with a long moustache waxed out straight at the sides. A waxed moustache turned up at the ends was associated with Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and might be referred to as a 'Kaiser' moustache. By the late 1880s and the 1890s the clean-shaven face was coming back into fashion… But many older men continued to wear a beard or moustache well into the new century. [Joan Nunn]
✂ Though modern culture often associates moustaches with men of the Victorian Era, Susan Walton shows that at the start of the Victorian Era facial hair was "viewed with distaste" and that the moustache was considered the mark of an artist or revolutionary, both of which remained on the social fringe at the time. This is supported by the fact that only one member of parliament sported facial hair from the years 1841-1847. However by the 1860s, this changes and moustaches become wildly popular even among distinguished men but by the end of the century facial hair became passé once more.
Though one cannot be entirely sure as to the cause of such changes, Walton speculates that the rise of the facial hair trend was due largely in part because the impending war against Russia, and the belief that moustaches and beards projected a more 'manly' image, which was brought about by the so-called 'rebranding' of the British military and the rehabilitation of military virtues. Moustaches became a defining trait of the British soldier, as even late as 1908 no enlisted soldier was permitted to shave his upper lip. [Wikipedia]
✂ The popularity of the beard in Victorian Great Britain has often been attributed to the Crimean War (1853-1856). This war consisted of a number of armed conflicts between Russia and Turkey, as well as Turkey’s allies (England, France and Sardinia). While stationed in the Crimean Peninsula, many men in the British Army began to grow beards. Partly a fashion statement, long “Crimean beards” (pictured below) also had the practical advantage of keeping soldiers warm in the local winter environment. When the war ended and British troops returned home to England, the public adopted the look with great enthusiasm. Although Crimean War veterans can be credited with the resulting popularization of the bearded masculine look, interest in growing beards was already starting to gain momentum within academic and political circles back home. However, with the return of successful soldiers sporting thick beards, the style became a common fixture of the modern, masculine Victorian man for approximately the next fifty years. [Brendan Cull]
✂ ...uniform regulation in the British Army between the years 1860 and 1916 stipulated that every soldier should have a moustache. Command No. 1,695 of the King’s Regulations read:
The hair of the head will be kept short. The chin and the under lip will be shaved, but not the upper lip…
Although the act of shaving one’s upper lip was trivial in itself, it was considered a breach of discipline. If a soldier were to do this, he faced disciplinary action by his commanding officer which could include imprisonment… [Today I Found Out]
✂ The long and short of it was that being clean shaven was for weaklings. This was proved by the British army, who, having occupied India, had seen the natives mock their pale, smooth and lady-like beardless faces. The British decided the best way to fit in and gain the trust of the Indian people was to copy them. So began Britain’s… opinion that facial hair was a symbol of masculinity.
By 1884 the opinion that facial hair was required by anyone not of the same disposition as Oscar Wilde was complete, and to prove it there was even a play entitled ‘The Moustache Movement’ which made great fooling of the ‘fact’ that all bare-faced men looked alike, whether they be ‘Duke or Dustman’. [amateur_casual]
✂ ...as medical historian Alun Withey writes on his blog, the Victorian resurgence of the big, bushy beard had to do with more than just fashion.
“By 1850,” writes Withey, “doctors were beginning to encourage men to wear beards as a means of warding off illness.”
As Oldstone-Moore points out, the Victorian obsession with air quality saw the beard promoted as a sort of filter. A thick beard, it was reasoned, would capture the impurities before they could get inside the body. Others saw it as a means of relaxing the throat, especially for those whose work involved public speaking. Some doctors were even recommending that men grew beards to avoid sore throats...
The mid-19th century had a lot going on, medically: the germ theory of disease was slowly gaining ground, and with it the understanding that illness could come from wee beasties. In England, the mid-1800s was also a particularly bad time for air pollution… That people might consider a beard a helpful filter against airborne ailments doesn't seem so ludicrous.
The reality, of course, says Lauren Friedman for Business Insider, is that beards are more a medical risk than a cure:
One recent study in Behavioral Ecology points out that "hair on the face and body are potential localized breeding sites for disease-carrying ectoparasites." And a London dermatologist told The Guardian that since "facial hair is more likely to trap bacteria and food... there is actually more chance of infection with a beard than a clean-shaven face." [Colin Schultz]
✂ By the end of the 19th Century, beards were finally out of fashion, except amongst older, conservative men. The young man’s friend was the discovery of bacteria – and newspaper reports that linked germs with beards. Throughout Europe and North America, new rules were made to prevent bearded men from handling food... [Lucinda Hawksley]
✂ ...by the 1890s, it became common practice to shave beards while patients were hospitalized. As germ theory was accepted and shared publically, facial hair became problematic. Research showed that beards could harbour bacteria which might lead to the spread of infectious diseases. For example, spittle caught in the hairs of the beard could contain tuberculosis. With contact, the disease could be passed from person to person. As a result, at the beginning of the twentieth century, hospitals in Britain banned beards altogether and nurses were expected to remove facial hair… as part of their health care duties. [Brendan Cull]
Some useful resources:
The Dictionary of Victorian London This is the main index. Click on ‘Clothing & Fashions’ - ‘Hair and Facial Hair’
A Victorian Lady’s Guide To Hairdressing By Mimi Matthews, on her website.
A Victorian Lady’s Guide To Hair Care By Mimi Matthews, on her website.
Victorian Women's Fashion, 1850-1900: Hairstyles By Joan Nunn, on the Victorian Web.
Victorian Men's Fashions, 1850-1900: Hair By Joan Nunn, on the Victorian Web.
The Hair at the Nineteenth Century By Pablo Briand, on The History of the World of Hair.
Hair: the styling of society On the Chertsey Museum website.
The great Victorian beard craze By Lucinda Hawksley, on the BBC website.
The moustache: A hairy history By Lucinda Hawksley, on the BBC Global News website.
Moustache On Wikipedia. Only a tiny bit about the Victorian era but interesting.
For Victorian Men, the Mustache Comb was Everything By Sharon Twickler, on Atlas Obscura.
From 1860-1916 the Uniform Regulations for the British Army Required Every Soldier to Have a Moustache On Today I Found Out.
The Victorian "Movember" By amateur_casual, on Sharpologist.
In the Victorian Era, Doctors Prescribed Beards to Help Keep Men Healthy By Colin Schultz, on The Smithsonian.
Victorian beard craze inspired false ‘mechanical’ whiskers On the University of Exeter website.
Beautiful Victorian Hairstyles By Simone Haruko Smith, on Bellatory.
A Hair-Razing History of the Beard: Facial Hair and Men’s Health from the Crimean War to the First World War By Brendan Cull, on Museum of Health Care.
Victorian Hairstyles: a short history, in photos By Kathleen Harris, on WhizzPast.
Victorian Era Hairstyles for Women On Victorian-Era.org
Victorian Hairstyles & Headdresses - 1860s On the Victoriana Magazine.
L-O-N-G Victorian Hair By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Curling Irons By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Styling Ladies’ Hair; American 19th Century By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Ladies’ Hairdressers By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Hair Augmentation By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Hair Indicative of Character By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian Era Men’s Hairstyles By Kristin Holt, on her website.
Victorian and Edwardian Hairstyles On The Barrington House Educational Center, L.L.C. website.
Victorian Male Hairstyles On Quickly. Collections of images from other websites. And though the page is labelled ‘Victorian Male Hairstyles’, there are images of women too.
1865-1900: Very long Victorian hair By Alex Q. Arbuckle, on Mashable.
Recreating Hairstyles of the 1890s An article from The Delineator, 1894, on Vintage Victorian.
The Ladies' Page - Health and Beauty By Barbara Onslow, on Victorian Page.
Women’s Edwardian Hairstyles: An Overview On Hair and Makeup Artist Handbook.
The Myth of a Myth: Brushing Your Hair 100 Times On The Pragmatic Costumer.
Beauty / Grooming / Washing By Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman, on This Victorian Life.
Victorian Shampoo Alternatives By Lori Elliott, on Our Heritage of Health.
Edwardian/Victorian Hair Care Tips from the Famous Aline Vallandri By Elizabeth, on A Merry Rose. Most of us have never heard of Aline Vallandri. But, in her day, Mademoiselle Vallandri was a famous singer who was also noted for her beautiful hair… In 1912, she shared her hair care secrets with "Every Woman's Encyclopaedia"...
A Victorian Lady's Toilette By Kathleen Bittner-Roth, on History Undressed.
How To Clean Your Hair Brush – Victorian And Edwardian Hair Care By Lina, on Sew Historically.
A Hairy Subject – Secrecy, Shame and Victorian Wigs By Julia Armfield, on the British Library website.
Victorian Men’s Hairstyles & Facial Hair A collection of Victorian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles and facial hair fashion of the time, and a few rather unique hair styles like a man with ringlets. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
Victorian Hairstyles A collection of Victorian photographs ranging from 1855 - 1880’s. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
Edwardian Hairstyles A collection of Edwardian photographs, depicting some of the hairstyles of the time, like the Low Pompadour. Hatpin Hairstyle. Side-Swirls. Flapper (The title ‘Flapper’ originally referred to teenage girls who wore their hair in single plait which often terminated in a wide ribbon bow.) & the pompadour. On the Vintage Thimble, on Tumblr.
The Human Hair Market From In Strange Company, by James Greenwood, 1874, on the Dictionary of Victorian London.
The Victorian Moustache Cup On Today I Found Out.
How to Grow, Curl, and Care for a Handlebar By Austin Sirkin, on Wonder How To.
Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century The one-stop blog spot for your Nineteenth Century Mustache needs!
Fuck Yeah Victorian Mustaches On Tumblr.
Victorian Mustaches By Ms. Lou, on The Neo-Victorian Parlour. The photographs on this aren’t loading (for me anyway) but I thought the text was interesting enough to include the link.
The Mustache By Camille Hadley Jones, on Edwardian Promenade.
Victorian Beards: A Pogonology...or something By Daniel Lewis, on Unpretentious Blabberings.
Victorian Era Beards Growing On Victorian-Era.org
Why Victorian Men Had Glorious Beards By Allison Meier, on Hyperallergic.
Beards and Moustaches On the Dictionary of Victorian London.
Awful Occurrence at an Evening Party Punch sketch, Jul.-Dec. 1851.
Barber Instructor and Toilet Manual By Frank C[lyde] Bridgeford. [1904] On Internet Archive. Can be read online or there are several download options.
Representations of Hair in Victorian Literature and Culture By Galia Ofek. A preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History By Victoria Sherrow. The link should hopefully take you to the Victorian section of the book. But this is a preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
The Ingenious Victorians: Weird and Wonderful Ideas from the Age of Innovation By John Wade. The link should hopefully take you to a bit about electric hairbrushes, but this is a preview on Google Books, so it may or may not work for you.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories By Leslie S. Klinger. A preview of the book on Google Books. The link should hopefully take you to the Copper Beeches. I only include the link here so you can see the note quoted above in situ.
5 Easy Victorian Inspired Vintage Hairstyles | Tutorial | Kathryn Marie On YouTube. 6 minutes, 29 seconds.
How to GIBSON girl Hair EDWARDIAN/ VICTORIAN vintage RETRO Hairstyle tutorial - Vintagious On YouTube. 5 minutes, 18 seconds.
Edwardian & 1920's style vintage hair 8 videos by Vintagious on YouTube.
The Victorian Beard - by Professor Richard J Evans On YouTube: 9 minutes, 49 seconds. Posted by GreshamCollege. Professor Richard J Evans, Gresham Professor of Rhetoric, provides a brief summary of the changing role of facial hair in Victorian Britain.
Please feel free to discuss this topic in the comments.
Please also feel free to comment about the canon story itself or any related aspects outside this week’s theme. For example, any reactions, thoughts, theories, fic recs, favourite adaptations of the canon story… Or any other contribution you wish to make. And if you have any suggestions for fic prompts springing from this week's story, please feel free to share those in the comments as well.
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And it's lovely to have you back again - I realise you do always have a lot going on ^^
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One random tidbit about Victorian hair-styling that I find interesting has to do with young children's hairstyles. Maybe you've already encountered this bit of trivia in one of your other posts. But to me it was surprising to learn that, since children to the age of about 5 all wore dresses, one of the main ways to read a child's gender was through their hairstyle. Apparently boy's hair was parted on the side or put into a top-knot, while girl's hair was almost always parted in the center. There's an interesting discussion about it, with some adorable paintings and photos, here:
http://www.vastpublicindifference.com/2009/08/boy-or-girl-public-service-announcement.html
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You know, when searching for stuff for this post, I had read somewhere that little boys and girls had their hair parted in different ways. And I'd vaguely dismissed it, thinking it didn't sound true. I certainly hadn't seen the article in your link. Fascinating stuff.
It's rather interesting from a social point of view. I suppose putting all small children into dresses was just convenient - easy to get them in and out of, and easy for potties and what have you. But it seems it was still important to parents to indicate as early as possible which sex the child was - much like today I suppose. I had been assuming before, because of the ubiquitous dresses and long hair, Victorian parents weren't bothered about this - a baby was a baby.
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Asking for a friend. Thanks.
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Well, I don't know for certain but I've been doing a bit of rummaging.
For a start, steam would definitely melt the moustache wax. Apparently that's partly why moustache cups were invented - because the steam from tea and coffee would make the wax run down gentlemen's faces. (See here (http://www.edwardianpromenade.com/men/the-mustache/).) And the wax would be designed to melt when warmed in the hand anyway.
Now, on the whole I'm guessing melted moustache wax would be sticky and tacky, and so not terribly suitable as a lubricant. In fact, one Victorian recipe quoted by a blogger has gum arabic in it. (See here (http://victoriansoapproject.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/moustache-wax.html).) The author mentions the moustache wax is sticky when applied and she accidentally glued herself to her cat. (I may have laughed considerably at this point...)
However, on a page that was reviewing modern-day moustache waxes, I found this: Conk's moustache wax is not one that I have tried myself, but according to someone who has, it has a light, pleasant, honey-like scent. He says that it is very soft, on the greasy side, and did not provide much hold in his case. Because it is petroleum based, it does not wash out with water. (My emphases.) Also, on the same website there was a DIY recipe made up of beeswax and petroleum jelly. (See here (https://www.handlebarclub.co.uk/wax/diy.shtml).)
So, if Watson's wax was made partly of petroleum jelly and perhaps you threw in an earlier complaint from him that it was too greasy and didn't offer enough hold, implying it wasn't particularly sticky... Then I think you may get away with it. And if you get any criticism you can always blame me :P
And now let us never speak of this again... ^^"
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Also speaking of things that we shall never speak of, I think I am about to write the fic that you thought I was going to write when you put that blip about the tattoo artist at the Turkish bath. And I had to go back and read up on Victorian nipple piercing (you did that, too, no?) and was very sad to find out that Prince Albert probably didn't have a Prince Albert. :( Sadness. But he will in my fic!!
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This whole thing was fascinating. Mandatory military moustaches! (And servants were required to be clean-shaven!) Moustache frames! Spring-loaded fake beards! (Which were epic, apparently. From one of the links: the device covered “the head, behind the ears, the forehead, the temple, the top of the cheek bones, and down some part of the cheek…") MUSTACHE SPOONS. (I don’t find mustache cups surprising; my dad has one. But mustache spoons! They look like a nightmare to clean.)
Were you able to find any images of Victoria's "Apollo Loop"? (I tried, but no love.) Because I'm picturing an effect like bunny ears, and that can't be right?
And only because it caught my eye: at the link for L-O-N-G Victorian Hair, there’s an ad for “Skookum Hair Grower” being sold out of New York: ‘skookum’ is a chinuk wawa word for strong. (Chinuk wawa is a local-to-me indigenous creole.)
And oh look, same link: cocaine is good for growing great hair and preventing dandruff! No wonder Holmes' hair stayed so dark for so long... ;-)
And I appreciated this advice in the Delineator article:
It is advisable to remove the dress bodice and assume a combing sack or towel before beginning to arrange the hair, that the arms may move without restraint; and it is also well to sit during the entire process, and thus save one's strength and, possibly, one's patience as well. To arrange an elaborate coiffure properly requires considerable time, patience and skill, and if the operation is allowed to unduly tax one‘s physical strength, the result will be a change for the worse in the expression of the face that will detract not a little from the general appearance.
My hair "only" comes down to my thighs, but if a hairdo is intricate enough I want to go take a nap halfway through, because it starts to feel like I've been holding my arms above-and-behind my head since the beginning of time.
Also, thanks to you, I spent a good chunk of yesterday reading and watching hairdo tutorials. I've been needing to, because I've got a thing coming up for which I'll need fancy hair, but I've been avoidant avoidant avoidant. So thank you for the assist!
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Moustache spoons do indeed look pretty awkward to clean. Interesting design though ^_^ (My late father also had a moustache but had neither cup nor spoon ^_^)
Were you able to find any images of Victoria's "Apollo Loop"? I've had a bit of a rummage and I think the term 'Apollo Loop' that the article uses is wrong or an alternative term. Try searching for 'Apollo Knot'. I think you'll get a more satisfactory result ^^ But here's a really good modern day example that I found: Victorian Apollo Knot (https://www.starnow.com/helencurriemua/photos/6863690).
‘skookum’ is a chinuk wawa word for strong. (Chinuk wawa is a local-to-me indigenous creole.) Oh, crikey - how interesting. And what a coincidence. Must admit I've always found pidgins and creoles fascinating. Adults are able to get together and construct a simplified, mutually-understood language. And then their children are born and learn it, and suddenly that simplified pidgin is a fully fledged creole. Human communication in all its forms is just astounding ^_^
My hair "only" comes down to my thighs, but if a hairdo is intricate enough I want to go take a nap halfway through, because it starts to feel like I've been holding my arms above-and-behind my head since the beginning of time. ^___^ I think my hair is (relatively) just a little shorter than yours - it goes past my waist but not in any kind of impressive way ^__^
I'm glad I inspired you to watch those tutorials ^_^ Must admit I never do anything fancy with my hair - I just plait it. If it's very hot I twist the plait up into a bun. I really fancy having a go at the Gibson girl style though. I'm not sure how well it'll work - my hair is wavy but not thick... What kind of fancy hair will you be going for? ^_^
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Apollo Knot: Wow, that's... well outside of the current notion of fashionable. More dignified (by contemporary standards) than what I had been thinking, but not by a lot.
Language really, really is! As far as coincidence goes, chinook-the-trade-language had a pretty wide-ranging geographic spread, and the diaspora area for chinuk wawa was similarly large. Moreover, 'skookum' was one of the more common works to be picked up by Anglophones. So it's not that shocking to run across 'skookum' in the context of American patent medicines, which very much enjoyed claiming a Native provenance. And yet it did catch my eye.
Yeah, I'm usually pretty low-key about my hair, too, usually just a rope or a bun, although sometimes two pigtails. (Plaits are scratchier than I like.) I used to just do a plaited bun for dress-up, but that's starting to look less "attractively grown-up" nowadays and more "severe and matronly."
I don't really know what I'm looking for! Something softer around the face (although probably not so full as an Edwardian pompadour), and also a bit decorative. And which will also stay put through a wedding and reception. A few of the styles in the Kathryn Marie video above might work, but I'll have to experiment. (And also figure out how bobby pins work!)
But while I was experimenting yesterday, I tried a Gibson tuck, which I liked pretty well, except that it left my hair a rat's nest afterward. I also tried the Newport coiffure in the Delineator article. (Although without fussing about with a curling iron, because I'm not strictly sure that I've owned one since high-school.) The Newport coiffure was easy-peasy, although it's right on the edge of being odd-looking by contemporary standards. But then again the checkout clerk at the grocery store yesterday had muttonchops, so maybe I'll fit right in with the hipsters now? WHO KNOWS FASHION IS HARD.
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...bunny ears.
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