Shall We Change Our Hair to Suit Our Gowns?: 1889

1920s platinum blonde cloche or wig. antiquedress.com

POWDER, PATCH, PERUKE

SHALL WE CHANGE OUR HAIR AS WE SHIFT OUR GOWNS?

Is the Wig to Be an Important Accessory of the Fashionable Wardrobe as in the Directory Days?

Hair-Dressing for 1889.

They say that Mme. Tallien had five-and-thirty wigs, each of which had cost thirty gold louis. There was a certain noble young Parisian named Mlle. Lepelletier de St. Fargeau, who was married not long after Robespierre lost his head. In her trousseau were included twelve fine blonde wigs, with twelve tulle, feather, flower, gauze and ribbon caps, worth, some of them, three hundred francs each, to adorn the coiffures.

We model our gowns after the fashion of the Directory. Are we to look to “ye olden times” also with regard to hair?

The query is suggested by a mass of superb pale gold tresses shown yesterday by one of the bright, business-like young women who form a majority of the city hairdressers. The silky lengths were very soft and fine and heavy, falling of their own will into wavy curls. The color was the rarest ever seen, a lovely white floss just tinged by sunbeams, such as one catches sometimes for a year and a month on the poll of a baby girl.

“What pretty actress is putting the $150 that it must cost into a single suit of hair?”

“Not for the stage; for the ball. This is a wig for Miss__,” naming a fleet-footed dancer of the society whirl.

“But Miss___ is a brunette. Besides, she has a magnificent head of hair of her own.”

“She is going to the ball in a Greek gown of pale green, and light hair is more becoming with that, you know. See, here is a bit of the stuff she left with me. She wanted the wig made up of the exact color which would look best with it and with its garniture,” and the little woman produced a scrap of Liberty silk worked with the Greek fret pattern in Japanese gold thread across one end.

“It’s to be made, she says, with classic draperies. This gold embroidery–it’s not a heavy tint and is not put on in masses–makes a border about the bottom of the skirt and about the waist, and there is just an edge of it around the neck opening. There is a scarf of pale green tissue caught up on the right shoulder and there is to be a band of green about the hair.”

“You dress the wig, then, before it goes home?”

“Why, certainly. The dressing, like the color, is to correspond with the gown. You let a wavy lock or two, not a bang, escape on the forehead. Then you gather the rest loosely and gracefully back into a soft, curly knot Then you thread the front hair, fillet-wise, with green ribbons. I think I shall add in this instance, if the lady will permit it, a ribbon wound about the knot, crossed below it, and having the two ends brought out on either side to join the fillet, and fastened by tiny jeweled crescents. Miss___ has a clear, delicate complexion, and in all that pale green with this straw-gold hair she will shine like a star.”

“Isn’t it a new thing for a girl to come out in hair not her own?”‘

“Well, I could tell you of three of four women who have ordered wigs to correspond with their evening gowns, but I suppose should lose good customers if I let the names escape. Perhaps, though, Helen Dauvray wouldn’t mind my saying that the first wig I ever made for her was selected after she left the stage–there used to be a fuss, you know, because she wore her own hair on the boards and wouldn’t adapt her coiffures to her parts–for wear in London drawing rooms while Ward is in Australia. A beautiful suit, too, it was. And, honest now, isn’t it more sensible than bleaching? How many women do you suppose have ruined their hair completely by drenching it with golden washes? It costs more to buy a blonde wig than it does to bleach your own hair, but there is this advantage that you can change back again any day you please. And in the busy weeks of the social season it is so convenient A woman can send her wig to a hair-dresser and get it fixed for the opera or a ball without any trouble to herself, when, to have her own hair done as elaborately and becomingly would cost much time, cutting her out entirely from Mrs. A’s delightful tea or the charming drive which she has promised to take with Mrs. C. It adds from an hour to two hours to her day,” and the small hairdresser smiled convincingly.

And will it come to that? Are we going back to the days when a woman changed her hair almost as often as she did her gown, when the wardrobe of a blonde beauty was not complete without a couple of raven wigs, and when the brunette’s dressing room was not properly furnished unless it contained sunny tresses in as great abundance as black hair? It would be a dress novelty indeed when a toilet was to be ordered to shop first for the coiffure. The hair-dresser–a mighty man he used to be and a mighty woman she may be yet–should bring out golden switches curly and fine, auburn switches ruddy and soft. One should try on hair as one tries on bonnets, to suit the complexion and the style. Fitted with the suit which was judged most becoming, one should beg for a lock as one carries off samples of silk or gauze. Then would come the task of matching and comparing.

“What have you in evening silks to go with this shade of hair?”

And to the dressmaker.

“Would you advise a pale blue embroidered crepe or a rainbow tulle as likely to go better with a curly crop of this light yellow?”

“I thought you were wearing bronze waves this season.”

“So I was, but I saw this being made in Mlle. K’s this morning and it was so fluffy that I couldn’t resist getting it for the ___’s dance next week. I do adore fuzzy yellow curls.”

“Well, I should recommend black lace. The tint is so delicate that any other color would kill it, I’m afraid.”

“Suppose I call it black gauze; then I can have covered with those lovely cobwebs in silver threads, with enameled spiders and dragon flies in colored mother-of-pearl and wear blue and yellow butterflies in my hair!”

And so on and on ad infinitum would it go. The revival of powder certainly points in the direction of wigs. Not perhaps as powder is now used, with just a dust of silvery crystals scattered over the head or the faintest shadow of frosting about the temples and forehead, but patches–wee ones–are venturing out with the powder, and the unusual popularity of fancy balls will give both a chance to show themselves and to accustom the conservative to their presence, while the Pompadour gown will suggest them inevitably to the eccentric for almost any even big occasion. Powdering the hair was the most uncleanly of habits, and powder with wigs would be less of an outrage than powder without them. Whoever has worn a poudre dress at a fancy ball knows what an incredible amount of powder it takes to whiten thoroughly the hair. Again and again one dusts it on, and again and again it sifts down on the scalp and leaves a streaked and mottled coiffure. By the time one’s patience is exhausted and one’s powder, one has laid out gigantic task for one’s self, one’s maid or the shampoo man to restore things to their normal condition. Powder for the evening means wigs for the evening if one values one’s peace of mind next day.

Actress in powdered hair or wig.

Aside from powder, fashions in hair show great variety this winter. In general hair is going higher in front and lower behind. A small coil low in the neck with just a lock or two relieving the bareness of the forehead is a simple style for all informal occasions, which to many women is the most becoming coiffure possible. With the artistic and historical costumes which are now correct form for full dress occasions the hair is, or ought to be dressed, with modifications, to correspond. For the Marie Antoinette gown the directions given by a fashion writer of 1773 are, save in one particular, literally followed by fashionable dames of the year of grace 1889. “Every lady,” says this beau of a century gone, “who wishes to dress her hair with taste and elegance should purchase an elastic cushion exactly fitted to the head; then, having combed her hair and properly thickened it with powder and pomatum, let her turn it over her model in the recognized fashion.” The headdresses of towering weight in which the unlucky Queen delighted, and of which it is said that they placed the face of the wearer in the middle of her figure, are an absurdity which cannot return. There is no fear of a pouf like that of Louis Philippe’s mother, in which “every one might admire the Due de Beaujolais, her eldest son, in the arms of his nurse, a parrot pecking at a cherry, a little [servant] and a multitude of other designs,” making a coiffure so high that its owner must kneel on the floor of her carriage in order to accommodate it, but my lady in her Louis XVI. Watteau gown or flowered brocade at a Delmonico ball preserves a certain semblance of consistency by rolling her hair high over her forehead on a cushion, letting only a curl or two drop to her temples and planting a puff comb of gold and diamonds, a diamond crescent, an aigrette of feathers, a flower or a pompon to confine and ornament it.

Marie Antoinette fancy dress, Charles Whitaker Auctions

The modern Mme. Pompadour wears a flounced lace skirt with overdress of rich yellow brocade, paniers on hips, square cut neck, elbow sleeves lace – trimmed, ribbon tied in a bow about her throat, and hair drawn loosely back from her face and gathered in a bunch of light curls on top of her head with a tiny wreath or a fluff of marabout feathers set coquettishly to one side. With her promenades one of Napoleon’s dead beauties in a severe, statuesque Empire gown of dead white silk, her black hair brushed straight and braided glossy and tight in a smooth and shining coil on the back of her head. And so they pass, each one different from the other, for if we are attaining individuality in dress in any particular it is in hair dressing.

ELLEN OSBORN. Copyright, 1888.

The Times [Philadelphia PA] 19 January 1889: p. 3

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Rococo Revival flourished periodically throughout the nineteenth century. Second Empire and Belle Epoque beauties were fascinated by the ribbons and lace and dainty flower garlands of what was interpreted as “Marie Antoinette” style; Worth did a thriving business in rococo fancy-dress for the Empress Eugenie and her court; the designer Lucile decorated her salon in rococo gilt and satin and encouraged panniers and Louis-heeled shoes, and powdered/white hair allowed any lady to feel like the Queen of France, frolicking about the le Hameau de la Reine.

But why stop at wigs of natural hue, even to match one’s gown? In 1914 France, wigs in a rainbow of colours were touted as the essential fashion accessory:

Coloured wigs are the latest fad of fashion. These wigs are made in all colours to match the dresses, blue, pink, purple, white, etc., and displayed as they have been in the windows of one of the Paris retail shops, they do not seem so very extreme. A lady nowadays purchases shoes to match her dress, so why not a wig to harmonise the top portion of the colour scheme? A superb fashion parade has just come off in one of the big hotels here (writes a Nice correspondent). The loveliest “mannequin” from Paris, dressed up in “the very latest”  strolled in and out between the tea tables. An old lady who sat near us said rapturously, “My dear, what a sartorial feast,” and indeed it was that. Several of the pretty mannequins wore blue or green wigs, and as they matched their gowns the effect was rather splendid. One girl, for example, wore a bright green transformation with a ball gown composed of ivory and sea green chiffon. There was a pleated tunic, and under that long fringes in diamonds and crystal. The low bodice, of which there was very little, was a mass of diamond and crystal embroideries, and there was a green mirror velvet sash. Another mannequin pranced about in an extraordinary dinner gown made of tango-orange chiffon and striped taffetas, the stripes being in shades of rose, green, black, and yellow. The skirt was finely pleated—please take notice that pleats are the rage of the season—and there was a bunchy tunic which gave a pannier effect at the sides. There was a high Medici collar piped with dull rose velvet, and the transformation was bright orange.

Observer 4 July 1914: p. 21

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdote

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

The Fall of a Fall: 1865

Lady with a “fall,” c. 1865 http://www.victoriana.com/Victorian-Fashion/civilwarhairstyles.htm

CURIOUS EXPOSURE

The feminine appendages known as waterfalls are daily increasing in size and weight by the use of a variety of articles known as padding by many of the fair sex, who wish to obtain a “fall” of elegant proportions. The New York Sun tells of an occurrence which happened to a young woman in that city on Monday, which could induce females to be exceedingly careful in selecting suitable articles for the “filling” on their hairy appendages, which should also be properly attached to their head gear. Miss Essex, a well-dressed young woman, residing in Greenpoint, was standing at the corner of Thompson and Canal street, waiting for a car, when a man—a painter to all appearance—bearing a short ladder on his shoulder, rapidly turned the corner, and not judging the distance right, came near striking the lady on the head with an end of the ladder he was carrying. As luck would have it, or perhaps ill-luck, the ladder missed the woman’s head, but struck her “waterfall,” detached it from the back hair, and caused a general discharge of the contents which combined the following articles: Two curled hair puffs; one piece of mourning crape; two dark-colored pincushions, and one black worsted stocking. These article had previously been carefully covered up by the slender locks of the maiden. Amid many expression of regret the man commenced to pick up the padding, for the purpose of returning them to the wearer, who retreated in great confusion, without waiting for her dry goods. A little boy was sent after her with the late “fall,” but he lady refused to recognize them. The reporter gave the boy a dime for one of the pincushions, and intends to keep it as a specimen.

Western Reserve Chronicle [Warren OH] 20 September 1865: p. 1

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil is frankly shocked that the lady did not have the wit to keep her hair-combings in some convenient receptacle on her dressing-table so she could have a “rat” made to relieve her from the necessity of packing her water-fall with pin-cushions and stockings. If one is superstitious, one might say that her contretemps with the ladder was due entirely to the use of the mourning crape, which must be disposed of after the period of mourning lest something unfortunate befall.

For more on the perils of chignons and falls, see this post on “Dis-tress-ing News About Chignons.”   If one is in the mood for hair-piece humour, see this post about Chignon Satire.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Champagne for the Hair: 1911

Champagne bucket hand-bag, Paris, 1950s https://www.augusta-auction.com/list-of-upcoming-sales?view=lot&id=16358&auction_file_id=38

CHAMPAGNE FOR THE HAIR

A hair specialist has told one of his lady customers (says our London correspondent) that she must not brush her hair at all, but must comb it with a rather coarse comb if it gets untidy, and rub the scalp with a velvet pad or a piece of chamois leather. The brush now has the reputation of spoiling the hair and thinning it, pulling it out by the roots. About half an hour should be spent nightly using the velvet pad or the pad of chamois. Then champagne is the latest announced liquid in which the hair should be washed. The first process consists in ridding the hair of grease by rubbing in the white of eggs for blonde hair, and by using the yolks for dark tresses. This should be rinsed off, and then the champagne bath has to follow, while red wine—preferably Burgundy of good body is recommended for tinting dark hair or rich auburn, and lemon juice is considered to be good for washing white hair, or hair that is on the way to getting white, as the lemon juice will by degrees impart a silvery hue. Soaking the head in champagne is said to impart a soft golden tint, and drying in the sun is recommended if there happens to be any sun available. If not, it should be fanned dry in a warm room.

New Zealand Herald 12 April 1911: p. 10

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire:  Mrs Daffodil has always felt that those historic personages who bathed in expensive liquids were being ostentatiously wasteful; certainly the Hall butler, Mr Sterling-Kidd, would tender his resignation if Her Ladyship were to demand the Bollinger Vielles Vignes ’04 merely to rinse her hair.

A more economical, if prosaic, solution is found here:

Colored Hair Powders.

Almost every woman has a tendency to wash her hair too often in order to keep it soft and fluffy and glossy. It’s a great mistake, for in the end, it tells upon the hair’s good health.
But, you will say, after one or two weeks, my hair becomes so oily and flat, it packs so it can not be dressed nicely—I know, there are dozens of objections. I get them in nearly every mail.

The solution is to use powder between shampoos, to dry up this extra oil, to keep the hair thick and fluffy, and to cleanse it. You’ll say to this—powder can cleanse only the hair not the scalp. That’s true, but the scalp is so well protected it doesn’t need too frequent a cleansing. You’ll say more seriously—powder leaves the hair dusty, it’s almost impossible to get it out, it takes off all the gloss.

Not colored hair powders, which smart beauty shops sell at the most exorbitant rates—and only a few shops at that. You probably won’t be able to buy colored powder, but you can make it yourself by following these simple directions.

If you’ve dark hair, make an exceedingly strong pint of coffee and strain and let it get cold. Add lumps of laundry starch, let them dissolve, pour off the liquid, let it drain and dry. Crush up the colored starch, until soft and free of lumps, add sachet powder to do away with any odor, and keep ready for use. If you’ve light hair, try strong tea.

Then dust the hair liberally with powder, rub through, shake and brush out. I’ve had all sorts of trouble with oily hair, and this I find the best remedy.

Fort Worth [TX] Star-Telegram 29 December 1922: p. 10

And, if money is no object or if one is Empress Eugenie, golden hair powder is a charming way to lighten the hair.

GOLDEN HAIR POWDER

 Powder d’or was first worn by the Empress Eugenie, at the Festival of Boeuf Gras, 1860. Since then this pretty conceit, as the wave of fashion always does, has extended from its centre to the circle of all who pretend to move within its sphere.

The best quality consists of crushed gold leaf, the common kind, or “speckles,” is nothing more than a coarse bronze powder.

The Art of Perfumery and the Methods of Obtaining the Odors of Plants, George William Septimus Piesse, 1878: p. 331

For the extreme fad of bleaching one’s hair, see this post.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

The Court Hair-dresser: 1892

A court hairdresser of a byegone day. http://www.onlinegalleries.com/art-and-antiques/detail/pair-of-figures-of-the-court-hairdresser-and-the-shoe-black-by-bloor-derby/115393

HE BEAUTIFIES WOMEN

A London Court Hairdresser Chats About His Patrons.

A Woman’s “Greatest Glory” Is Her “Weakest Point”

The Most Popular and Becoming Coiffure

The Princess of Wales Style is Her Own.

Mr. Walter Trueffit’s hair establishment is in the fashionable quart of Bond Street, and by virtue of his situation and renown princesses, duchesses and lesser women of English nobility bow down to his taste and submit to his dictation.

He can thus afford to be frank and discuss with me the fearful and wonderful processes of a fashionable coiffure. “Some poet said,” he remarked, “that a woman’s greatest glory is her hair. It isn’t so. A woman’s most uncertain beauty and her most deceitful charm is her hair.

“Why, you would scarcely recognize some of these court ladies whom you see at functions if you saw them as I do with locks au naturel.

“A woman’s whole manner and appearance is at stake when she places herself in my hands. I can make her or I can mar her,” said this tyrant of the court.

But Mr. Trueffit is a clever artisan and he has had twenty years’ experience to back his statements, so I listened while he reviewed the subject from his trade standpoint.

“How long does it take you to dress a head of hair?”

“Oh! It takes the average hair surgeon an hour and a half, but I once operated on five cases between the hours of ten and one. It was a great rush, I tell you, to get the women ready for the drawing-room at Buckingham. That performance beat any other record in my line of business.”

I asked him why he didn’t write a book on his varied experiences, and he replied that he couldn’t afford to ruin his trade by destroying a charm in women that most men believe to be natural. “Better fool ‘em as long as you can,” he said, very sensibly, and I agreed with him. He was something of a historian, this hairdresser, for he told me that the Greek warriors were the first to discover that a woman’s hair was her first assailable feature, and he referred to a stone frieze form the temple of Apollo exhibited among the antiquities of Athenian sculpture in the British Museum and representing a battle scene between the Greeks and the Amazons in which Athenian heroes drag the Amazons to earth by twisting their long hair about their muscular arms.

It was this knowledge which produced the Grecian style of headgear, for then, as now, it was a species of coiffure built in curling parapets, spiked to the topmost curl with various descriptive weapons in the form of Greek ornaments that no man could seize with impunity. Fashion, which in many ways is leading society back into the pretty galleries of past styles, has taken a stride from the present century into the age of early Athens, and in London, as in Paris, the prevailing fashion of dressing the hair for ladies is Grecian, said my instructor.

“What is the style of hair dressing used by the court dames in England?” I asked.

“The Grecian coiffure, of course, is the most popular,” he replied, “although it is not becoming to all faces. The best reason I can assume for the prevalence of this style is that fact that it shows the shape of the head and poise of the neck better than any other fashion. With some ladies I have found it necessary to dress the hair higher or lower in angles according to the outline of the face and the curve of the neck. English women of the aristocracy generally have a liberal supply of their own hair and do not require the addition of false twists to any great extent. I have rarely been called up to use any false hair in the coils at the back, but more often find it necessary to attach a fringe of curls to the natural growth in front over the forehead. It is the custom among all titled women when going to a grand ball to employ a hairdresser. His skill and taste sometimes contrive a complicated style that has no artistic precedent of any kind. The princess of Wales, for instance, never wears her hair in the Grecian fashion because it is not becoming to her. Therefore she has a style of her own which very few faces can carry successfully.

“What is the rule for wearing the hair at court entertainments?”

“It is generally founded upon the prevailing fashion of the times, allowances being made for the hairdresser’s judgment upon certain complications which are suitable to the face and head of the wearer. For young ladies the Grecian style is most becoming. On court occasions a delicate tulle veil is fastened with a diamond star, sun tiara or coronet of diamonds, and other valuable ornaments, generally heirlooms in the family, to the crown of the coiffure, while in front three ostrich tips are set drooping a bit over the fringe of curls. These plumes are usually white, sometimes pale blue or pale pink, but if the court be in mourning of course they are black.”

“What is the cost of a court coiffure?” I asked.

“Oh! Some of the ladies carry enormous fortunes in ornaments on the head. I have known one coiffure to represent a cash value of £10,000, nearly $50,000. Great care has to be taken in fastening diamonds and gems in the hair securely, and this branch of the hairdresser’s art is perhaps the most important.

“With elderly ladies the style of court hair dressing varies according to the quantity and quality of the hair. Ladies of advanced age usually wear lace mantillas or lappets fastened to the hair and falling over the shoulders. We have one set charge for dressing a lady’s hair which is never varied.”

“How much is that?” “Half a guinea ($2.52). Every court hairdresser carries a case of tools like a surgeon, and he travels from one mansion to another in a carriage like a doctor.”

“Where do the styles for court coiffures originate?”

“That would be hard to say. Of course we are always watching the fashion journals and studying the fashion plates and we get a great many ideas from the Paris papers.”
Very few American ladies apply for hairdressers, I was told, but when they do it is always in preparation for a presentation at court.

There is a special superiority in the Grecian style of hairdressing, and that is it can be bought in separate pieces or complete, so that with the very slightest natural foundation one can create as graceful and artistic a coiffure as fancy may dictate. And the whole wig is made of human hair, too. I went out into the fog and wondered no more at the frailty of my sex when I thought of the many odd and fascinating scalps that had been presented a court this year.

The Repository [Canton, OH] 23 October 1892

A 1923 Court presentation ensemble. Victoria & Albert Museum Collection

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Queen Victoria was still on the throne at the time of this article, yet the same requirements obtained–sponsor, train, feathers, veil, and curtsy–until court presentations were discontinued by our present Queen in 1958. Incidentally, Mr Truefitt–the correct spelling of his name–later went into trade manufacturing gentlemen’s razors.

At the time of King Edward’s coronation, court hairdressers were much in demand.

PEERESSES COURT HAIRDRESSER

Early Coronation Hour Brings Services of Coiffeuses Into Big Demand.

London, Saturday, April. 5. The early hour fixed for the coronation ceremony has had the effect of sending many ladies to their hairdressers. The smart hairdressers will spend all the day before the ceremony in crimping and waving the hair of the ladies who will be in the Abbey and the night beforehand they will go from house to house dressing the locks they have previously attended to with irons. Every appointment has already been made. One lady who objected to half past six o’clock in the morning as too early for her was told that it must either be then or not at all, as the artist had every other moment filled. Seattle [WA] Daily Times 6 April 1902: p. 3

Sensible ladies sent their maids to school for specialized hair-dresser training so they did not have to compete for appointments. No lady of title looks her best when she has to rise before six in the morning to have her hair dressed.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

A School for Hairdressing: 1890

 

A lady’s maid shampoos her mistress’s hair. http://plushpossumstudio.blogspot.com/2011/04/antique-advertisement-only-her.html

A SCHOOL FOR HAIRDRESSING

A New York Barber Who Teaches Maids How to Use the Brush and Comb.

Perhaps the latest thing in the educational line in this city was inaugurated Monday. It is a school for hairdressers. It started with a big class of ambitious young women, and the indications are that many more will join. Women only are to be admitted to these classes, and the subjects of instruction will be limited to the dressing of ladies’ hair. The pupils will be taught how to comb, brush, shampoo, crimp, curl, singe, plait and arrange the hair of women. They will be instructed by experienced hair-dressers, and when they are graduated they will be able to do all that a competent “ladies’ barber” can. The course will cover two weeks, and will comprise twelve lessons. The tuition is to be $10 for the course.

“So many young women have asked me to teach them the art of dressing hair,” said the owner of the place the other day, “that I was forced to open the school or use up all my time teaching them separately. Most who wish to learn are ladies’ maids. You see, it greatly adds to their value when they are able to dress their mistresses’ hair properly. I do not think that there will be any difficulty in teaching them in two weeks’ time all that is necessary for them to know. I have several competent assistants and I shall superintend the work. The pupils will practice first on dummy wooden heads fitted with wigs. They are just as good to learn upon as the real head.”

“And can the girls become artistic hairdressers in so short a time?” “That depends entirely upon how much natural taste they may have. It is like any other art; to excel in it one must have a natural aptitude for it. Hairdressing requires taste. I may be able to teach a young woman the mechanical arrangement of a coiffure, but I cannot teach her just what coiffure is best suited to a certain face. That requires a natural taste and many years of observation and practice. But I will give my pupils much technical knowledge and such hints for self-instruction that they may practice to advantage after they leave the school. The school is my own idea. I do not know of another one in New York. I believe that it will prove a success and that its influence will be felt.”

“Will you teach to bleach and dye hair?”

“If the pupils wish to learn the higher branches of the art they may do so of course after they have mastered the regular course. But that is something for after consideration; the main thing now is to start the school and begin the work. I have now about thirty pupils to begin with.” New York Sun.

Jackson [MI] Citizen Patriot 25 October 1890: p. 11

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: Mrs Daffodil smiles nostalgically at the idea of ladies’ maids dressing their mistresses’ hair properly. One of her first acts when employed in that office by an intolerable American heiress was to accidentally singe off the young woman’s back hair in its entirety—on the eve of her debut into London society as a new bride. This contretemps might have been avoided entirely had Mrs Daffodil had access to a school such as above. However, Mrs Daffodil is nothing if not resourceful and an improvisation, represented as the latest Parisian novelty: a flounce of lace attached to the remaining hair and a tiara set with emeralds the size of pigeon’s eggs, saved the day. The coiffure was the subject of much favourable comment at Lady Wormwood’s ball.

Singeing hair or “blistering the head” for cosmetic or medicinal purposes has been mentioned before in an interview with a well-known French hairdresser in New York.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

 

Blistering a Head: Secrets of a Hair-dresser: 1893

The four Russian Grand Duchesses had their heads shaved in 1917 during a bout with measles.

HER CHIEF GLORY

Fair Woman’s Art Shown in Arranging Her Hair

How to Trim, Dress and Preserve the Glossy Locks.

Uses of a Blistered Scalp.

A French Hair Dresser Discloses Some of the Secrets of Her Art—

Ideals of the Artists—Wonders Accomplished by Continuous Scientific Treatment—Tricks of a Trade of Which Little is Known—Puffs and Rolls Once More Coming Into Vogue.

“But I assure madam, it will not hurt; just five little moments, and madam will not know that her head has been touched with the iron. Blistered? That ugly word! Madam thinks it is the torture, but I swear to madam she will not cry out. Pouf! I screamed myself with the fright after I was ill with the fever, and they brought the iron. But when they showed to me my poor hairs all thin and weak, I said: ‘Oui, oui, scald me, blister me, take away the skin! It is better to die than not to have the long curls any more.’  And so, as madam may believe, they burned the head and I laughed at the hurt. Madam may see that I have my poor little curls, so poor, so dark beside madam’s hair of yellow. But it will die and force madam to wear a wig, the hideous wig of an old woman. Horrible! Will madame let me save this for her? In my France the fisher girl wears a little cap to hide her hair. Her hair is sacre, holy I think you call it, and besides the men, those foolish men, they run after the girls and whisper silly words if by accident they see the great braids. And when the luck in the boat is bad, and the pere and frere cannot buy new kerchiefs or sabots for the fisher girls at home, the little fools cut off their hair for the wretched francs one sends from Paris. Then what available the kerchiefs or the sabots after it is whispered all about ‘Jeanne has no more hair.’ The girls point at Jeanne the fingers and the men laugh, and because the glory is gone say rude things. Ah! Well, Jeanne, who cannot think to know that the men love women for hair and bright eyes, and not for kerchief or sabots, Jeanne has been well punished.”

A Pleasant Interior.

And the deft little French woman with the masses of cloudy hair touches madam’s nerves with balmy words, her hands stroke madam’s tresses—the few wisps that have survived tongs, alkali washes, modish cuts and hereditary baldness—with practiced ease.

The apartments are handsomely furnished, homelike rooms. Fires burn in the grates, the latest magazines are strew about the tables, and well dressed women, whose carriages are known on Fifth Avenue, bend over them awaiting their turn in the skylit, severely practical chamber through whose curtains the little French woman may be seen at her art. She is truly an artful person. White-capped maids, in reality hairdressers too who are employed to aid the madam in her business, pass back and forth through the rooms; subtle penetrating odors of violet, heliotrope and rose subdue pomades and tonics and washes used for scalp massage, while the Parisienne’s running voice and cooing lies quite dispel the irritation with which New York women of thirty years enter these apartments to ward off the two swift approaches to age.

For it is here that

Scientific Treatment of the Hair

Has been know not only to tighten dropping tresses and awaken life in comatose bulbs, but to coax the fiber from the heads long bald—men’s heads, at that which have shown for years in the orchestra circle bald as a billiard ball.

But the French woman’s remarks about the boys, young and old, who sneak to her rooms during hours reserved for them, would make, as Kipling says, “another story.”

Their wives come earlier in the day, and in due season are ushered into the operating room, where the coiffure is pulled to pieces, and various little curls, which peep so alluringly from the Psyche knot or the stately chignon, are ruthlessly picked out from the scanty locks which madame praises.

“Not long,” she murmurs, with disparaging eyes glancing over the switches and front pieces of the demolished structure, “in a few more weeks madame will find a new growth like the fuzz on a baby’s head. It is no miracle, oh, no! The good saints intend all the ladies should have hair, but the scalp gets tired, but I rub it and am a doctor, so that the hair must grow!”

Then the doctor seizes a magnifying glass and examines every inch of the head, after which she massages it for several minutes. Next she rubs a lotion into the pores and an ointment down the strands of hair. These she carefully dries, almost hair by hair; other preparations makes it glossy or fluffy, as the operator sees fit, and much brushing and stroking and singeing of split ends evolve the treatment for that day into a masterly coiffure.

It is only in serious cases that the madam insists upon

Blistering a Head.

It is not good policy, because it is certainly painful and extraordinary care must be taken for many weeks. Yet there is no other way to remove the thick cuticle from a “marble bald spot,” and reach the living bulb beneath. Madam swears by the virtues of her process and vows that the madam in the long chair will see the results before long. And sometimes madam does.

If she does not, if the hair vesicles are utterly defunct and the laborious life of a rich society woman has sapped vitality until it cannot respond to the skillful touch of the “masseur of the scalp,” there is another finely appointed suite of apartments not a block distant where she may betake herself. “Hairdressing Parlors” is the legend on the card, but on the first floor one sees only the wigs, the artificial curls, the elaborate coiffure, all ready to be pinned upon the head, which are the vivacious French woman’s abomination. The prize hair of a “large, newly imported stock” is here—poor little Jeanne’s, whose cropped head is bowed now disconsolately beneath the jibes of her companions. The glorious masses of it sell for a sum that would delight her peasant heart with kerchief and sabots for many a day. The preparation of the raw material is so careful that a woman may almost be pardoned for covering her scraggy growth with soft, clinging, silky curls or naturally waved gold or braids of brown, or puffs of auburn; as mode dictates the color and the style.

Upstairs, where one’s own locks are lightened with scientific applications of peroxide or changed into a dusky bronze with “mezzolina,” there is much discussion, as to

The Coming Manner of Coiffure.

“We cannot say positively,” announced a maiden whose head was a good advertisement for her establishment, “for we haven’t had any direct word from the other side. But we are pretty certain that the hair will be worn very broad and low down on the side of the head in puffs and rolls.”

“Rats,” groaned a voice. “Yes, rats,” was the reply. “And the bang will be pointed in a  long curl with side pompadour. Perhaps it will be parted through the middle for another year, with a tiny bang. Too bad the chignon is taking the place of the three Empire puffs, one high at the point of the head and the other two lying against it. The regular French twist will come again, too, and the hair will not be crinkled with irons, as it is now, either. More and more will be used; with the rolls and puffs a great many switches will be needed. The new style will be very exclusive, indeed, because everybody cannot afford to follow it.”

So we are going back to the ancient wads of horsehair, which made our grandmothers’ heads look like padded cushions.

Well, why not? Having just escaped shipwreck on the crinoline reef, we are prepared to graze the other enormities of fifty years ago. And, moreover, we will all rush into the purchase or manufacture of “rats” and pin them to our heads regardless of their shapes. Round faces and short faces, long faces and square faces, hatchet faces and tubby faces, will turn towards the new coiffure; as to the becomingness of the style, that will not matter much at first. The sense of the eternal fitness of the things is always lost with the appearance of a novel mode. All women cast themselves into a single mode and come out with the power of individual expression gone.

Ideals of the Artists

Hair, dress, manner are subdued to the proper relation with other women’s hair and dress and manner. A few days ago a group of women were standing before an exhibition of “ideal heads’ by famous artists. The spectators wore flying capes to their ears, tiny hats and coiffures, each and every one of them was crimped heavily from the nape of the neck to a tightly pointed coil at the top of the crown.

The heads of the ideal women were, after all, painted, one could see, from humble models—German peasant girls with ripe youthful faces, set in a mist of loose flaxen hair, which fell in uneven, airy masses on their necks, or was gathered into a massive braid from beneath a gay shawl twisted about their heads. One face was that of a young girl whose light brown waving hair was coiled into a ‘prentice coiffure on her head. It was her first effort to become a woman, perhaps; at any rate, there was a story in the simple twists of soft tresses.

Another portrait was that of a Magdalen, whose bare arms and clasped hands gleamed through straight wild masses of neglected hair.

Her face was calm and sad. There was abandonment only in the subtle suggestions of utter forgetfulness of her sinful beauty.

Besides here was a gypsy girl, whose black locks were tightly curled and shaken down over one cheek and a broad white brow. Beneath her headdress the straight hair au naturel betrayed itself.

An arrant little coquette, this Romany maid! Artists and women in the unartificial walks of life have alone preserved the secrets of beauty.

Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 19 March 1893: p. 22

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: As one can see from the photograph at the head of the post, the Imperial Russian Grand Duchesses’ heads were shaved during a bout of measles. This was done for coolness in fever and for hygienic purposes, because germs were believed to be spread by the hair. It was also a popular belief that shaving the head, as this cooing French hairdresser threatens, would allow hair thinned by disease or heredity to grow back thick and luxuriant. Blistering the scalp was a recognized treatment for alopecia and was also done with chemical agents such as the caustic croton oil or carbolic acid.  In the 1890s, every woman wanted to look like the stately females drawn by Charles Dana Gibson, with their whipped meringue pompadours. One could not be fashionable without a fine head of hair. And if one was not fashionable, one might as well be dead—hence the ladies’ submission to cures that sound to Mrs Daffodil like the tortures of the Inquisition.

Hair has always inspired controversy. You’ll find a post on chignon horrors here. And chignon satire here.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.