Gibson Girl Hairdos

Around 1910 when the Merry Widow Hat came on the scene, the hair was getting equally gigantic as the hat brim. 

I have a suspicion that a lot of the people who come to this site and others looking for information about how to recreate these old Victorian (really Edwardian) style hairdos, are a bit disappointed when they find the answer pretty much amounts to "a wig." 

Oh, there might be some method of getting a similar look with modern hairsprays and styling waxes, but looks like the one at left were pretty much achieved by buying up masses of false hair and weaving them in with your own. Beauty advice books of the day even advised not to attempt attractive hairdos without having false hair available, and I can certainly vouch that a look like the one at left is hard to do even with a rat in place -- it requires so much hair you can barely cover the hairpiece unless you have another bunch of false hair added in to coat it!

Check out this page from a 1910 Sears Catalogue to see what kind of hair pieces women had to use to gain these looks:


0 comments:

Post a Comment