HAIR DRESSING

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1578, 25 November 1924, Page 2

HAIR DRESSING

OF OTHER DAYS—AND TO-MORROW. Those who are 'lamenting the “sheared and shorn’ style of hairdressing known as “shingled” are probably comforted by the rumour that “ringlets” will shortly return to favour. The soft, smooth coils and the sleek, boyish-looking head typical of Miss 1924 are, however, more expressive of her mentality than the “ringlets” of -a bygone age. Ringlets belonged to the period of the poke bonnet, the prim, sheltered, simpering ■little person who was easily flustered and suffered with “megrims” not in keeping with the modern woman. Throughout history the greatest change in a woman’s toilette has been due to the arrangement of her hair, and has expressed the feminine outlook in different periods more than anything else. Thus, in the early days of Christianity in Europe, a primitive simplicity marked the coiffure, for women wore their hair loosely flowing over the shoulders, and held in place by a simple fillet of silk, or, on more ceremonious occasions, bands of gold or silver.

It was during the Norman period in England that the hair was coiled and braided under the austere-looking wimple—a piece'of silk wound around the head and thrown over the shoulder.

During the reign of Henry I. the wimple was discarded, braids and plaits ending with pointed tags of silk and metal being displayed in public. It wasn’t long before women began to vie with each other as to the length and luxuriance of their braids, and there was an enormous business in false hair. These handsome artificial plaits were pinned under the silken cap or flowing veil worn at that time.

A curious headdress was the “hennin” worn in the Middle Ages. This was a lawn handkerchief, either plain, or embroidered, stiffened with wires under which the hair was gathered into a caul of gold or embroidery. A long funnel-shaped tube pointed like a spire, made of brocade and lavishly embroidered with beads fixed firmly on the head, with a long veil floating from the top, was also a typical fashion of this period. Following upon the severity of the Puritan fashions, women’s hairdressing in Stuart days was elaborate; a mass of ringlets tied with ribbon and dressed over a frame at the side—not a particularly becoming fashion, as may be seen from the pictures of great ladies of that day. Even to the men (their heads covered with curls and ringlets hanging over their shoulders) the periweg and peruke was a most important feature of the toilet. From this time onwards women’s hairdressing became more and more bizarre, looped and puffed, and stiffened out with wires, piled up in a huge bow known as a “top knot” crowning the edifice. Addison, alluding in the Spectator to the hairdressing of his day, expresses his wonder that “female architects who raise such wonderful structures out of ribands, lace and wire have not been recorded for their inventions.” In the early days of the nineteenth century this freak hairdressing reached ,its limits. At that time towering masses of hemp, perfumed and powdered and redolent of pomatum, which took many hours to erect and was often not taken down for weeks, was the hairdressing in vogue. This unhygienic structure was frequently decorated with the most incongruous ornaments—a straw ship or a bed of flowers being the most popular. Ever since then women have favoured a simpler form of hairdressing, though the chignon, a fashion of the ’sixties, occasioned the wearing of a frame or pad of false hair, over which the hair was brushed into voluminous curls and rolls. The hair has been coiled severely on the crown of the head, worn low at the nape of the neck, then with a coil protruding known as the “teapot handle” style, through the ’eighties and ’nineties, and down to the present day. With her hardly won privileges, her broadened outlook, her efficiency and independence, the modern woman favours simplicity, hygiene, and beauty in her coiffure as in other details of the toilette. She modifies the prevailing mode to express her own personality, and achieves a result both becoming and artistic. —Glasgow Herald.