Sharon Collier wrote:
Many people save their hair, the stuff that ends up in their brush, for use
in fancy hair styles. They make a "rat" of it and pin/arrange the rest of
the hair over it. Also, many fancy hairstyles used false pieces. There is a
scene in "Jefferson In Paris", where the daughter is upset, and pulls her
hairstyle down, pulling out the false pieces as she does. ...
I think the original poster's problem was not that she had too little hair to
do the styles (something modern hairdressers can be pretty good at
compensating for, particularly in bridal styling) but rather, she needed help
dealing with a large quantity of hair, which is in many cases more
historically accurate. As someone brought up earlier, these days a mainstream
hairdresser thinks shoulder-length counts as "long," and modern instructions
for fancy styles are written assuming a shorter-than-period length.
I'm of an age now where I can only look forward to having less hair over time
rather than more, even though I haven't cut it since I was 17 and don't ever
intend to. Thanks to the natural effects of aging, my braid has lost a third
of its length and half its thickness in the last 10 years. But I still have
enough hair for two or three modern people, I think. One thing I've found
makes a crucial difference in doing elaborate hairstyles is texture,
particularly slipperiness. Some people have naturally smooth/straight hair,
but this becomes even worse to deal with if you use modern hair care products,
particularly conditioners. Those make your hair smoother, and it will slip
right out of many arrangements. It's important to remember if you read
Victorian instructions for hairstyles that the people those instructions were
written for had, in general, a very different texture to their hair than
people do now.
One option is to overload the hair with gels, powders, or other additives when
you do the styling, to make it "stickier," but this can get pretty nasty and
heavy, and may cause other problems with the styling. Another solution -- but
this takes a longer-term commitment -- is to adopt a pre-modern hair care
regimen. That means no shampoo or conditioner at all, just extensive brushing
in a way that cleans the hair, and periodic rinsing with water or herbal
infusions. We've had extensive discussions about this on the list periodically
in the past, but it's been a few years since it's come up.
After we talked about non-modern hair care regimens here in 2000, I tried it
myself, with great success. Any of you who have met me in the past 10 years
will know how good my hair looks -- and I haven't used shampoo more than four
or five times in that period (mostly in cases where I needed to get out
something like chlorine after swimming). My hair has tremendous body, is not
oily at all, and if I style it, it stays where I put it.
--Robin
p.s. Here are some recent photos of me dancing, which give a good view of my
hair in motion:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2034901&id=1238106328&l=86e96422ff
FB people, please don't friend me at the above page unless you are
particularly interested in me rattling on about my kids. My costume friends
are welcome at my *other* FB page -- search on [email protected]
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