Victorian Hairstyles

http://www.wga.hu/art/s/stieler/amalie.jpg
Painter: Joseph Karl Stieler
Sitter: Nanette Heine
Year: 1829

National Portrait Gallery
Replica by Sir George Hayter
Sitter: Queen Victoria

The above two photos are from the early nineteenth hundreds, I can tell this because of the hair style as they have tight almost ringlet curls tight to their faces, they were always close to the head and never went past their chins, to create these curls they would only use the front half of the hair, which would have a middle parting and be very sleek and smooth to the head, with the rest of the hair they would plait it and put it into a bun. At the very start of this time the bun would be very high almost at the top of the head and this was known as an apollo knot, which was a Georgian hair style that had carried on over from that period into this one, which soon moved on, as time went on the bun slightly moved down the head.

As the century progressed so did the hair styles, instead of having tight curls up round the face, they had move on to letting them drop down, at first it was only a little bit more than the chin,this look gives the impression of girls looking more romantic as in this time period the idea of a women was to be very feminine but eventually they got further down the body, this is also due to the fact that victorian's didn't cut their hair, which you could image grew to some incredible lengths. With the length of their hair constantly growing, made the hairstyles expand even more, making the hair styles grow in height as well, some women even styled their hair with height that would then be hidden by a hat or some other hair accessory. To create this padding they would use their own hair that would have fallen.

In the latter part of Victorian era the hair styles has progressed even further as in the 1870/80s the curls had moved from the side of the head to the back of head, as the image below shows. Women used the help of a marcel wave named aptly after the man who created itf, to create these curls, this also saw the start of the gibson girl which is at the very end of the Victorian era but is associated with the Edwardian era.

 

Above are my attempts at early Victorian hairstyles, with the use of both plaits and curls that only reached to the bottom of their chin, whilst creating these hair styles I found them a bit tricky to get the hang off especially when curling the front half and also when it came to plaiting the front because you need to do it in the direction so then you can get a perfect loop that shows the ear.