CROWNING GLORY

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 29 January 1927, Page 11

CROWNING GLORY

THE old order of things required that half a dav should be spout, in.dressing one single head of hair, and the dresser was obliged to stand on steps in an endeavour to administer the finishing touch. That is no exaggeration, for two centuries ago a fashionable lady’s chin was the centre of her appearance, so enormous was the head dress. In the days of William and Mary the tall head dress was a formidable affair, which soared several storeys into the air. The woman who desired to cause a sensation when she sallied forth would wear towers of pompons of hair, which were stiffened with wool or meal, and covered with powder and reeking with pomatum. Having raised the hair to a dizzy eminence. the creators of fashion then devised elaborate settings. l'Tom the reproductions of drawings of the eighteenth century it appears that nothing was deemed too extreme, and several ladies of fashion possessed, heads surmounted by three-masted schooners in full sail, and it is on record, that one grand dame planned her head to represent, a dustman’s sorting ground. On the summit the ingenious dresser placed a few cinder sifters, and he then fixed a dust cart that appeared to struggle up the side, and around the lower curls he placed a sow and a litter of baby pigs. Not to be outdone, another famous beauty caused her dresser to fix a sedan chair on the top of her tliree-foot hair construction. The sedan chair was complete, with elaborately arrayed chairmen, lady, inside lolling on crimson cushions. A description of the coiffure of the Duchess de Chartres'is as follows:—“At the hack of the coiffure a woman is sitting with a baby in her lap; on the right, a parrot is playing with a cherry; on the top there is a curl of her husband’s hair, one of her father’s, and one of her father-in-law’s.” At one great assembly a lady was noticed with a superb head dress which showed ducks on the hanks of a stormy lake, a hunter with a gun, a windmill, a dainty little country lass flirting vigorously

EXTRAVAGANCE IN TOILET

THREE FOOT COIFFURES

with a fat old. abbe. and a miller with his donkey.

The expense of those coiffures was enormous, and in those days when a. pound sterling meant three or four times what it does to-day, it was quite usual for a.lady to pay 50 guineas to an ingenious hair dresser to arrange her crowning glory. Naturally such gigantic and exceedingly elaborate hair creations made washing unpopular. Was it reasonable to expect a, woman who had spent 50 guineas on her hair to demolish the entire structure a few hours afterwards? Some of them actually kept their hair in the same position for two months without disarranging one single strand. When it is remembered that the towers which were placed on the head were stuffed with such materials as greasy wool, meal and cloth, and that the hair outside the towers had to be powdered every day to hide the dust, and that false curls had to be attached where Nature had omitted to supply the demand, some idea may be gained of the difficulties which the women of that day had to contend with. The position often became alarming. Ladies with sailing ships, country lasses and abbes, dust carts and wind mills on the tops of their vast head dresses became animated. The ships commenced to move, the abbes to flirt—but there is no record that the windmill ever ground out any corn. But in the papers and band bills of that age one reads many diverting advertisements which, contain recipes for keeping the hair dressed.

In the London Magazine of 1768 this appears:—“l went the other morning to make a visit to an elderly aunt of mine, when I found Tier pulling off her cap, and tendering her head to the ingenious Mr Gilchrist, who has lately obliged the public with a most excellent essay on hair. He asked how long it. was since her head had been opened and repaired. She answered, ‘Not above nine weeks.’ To which he replied that it was as long as a head could go well in the summer, and that therefore it was proper to deliver it now.”