We recently had a talk at uni with costume designer Jane Petrie who said something along the lines of “A good costume without the proper hair and make-up is just a fancy dress”. I must admit that while I’m been big on being period in the design aspect, styling my hair has always been my weak point when dressing up. My hair is very fine and thin plus it is naturally straight as chives, so not the best conditions for historical hairstyling. However having put so much effort into making a high quality and at least superficially authentic dress we don’t want all of that to be ruined by a modern hairstyle, do we?
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A while ago I made this 1832 evening gown for uni, the Candy Cane dress as I call it. Now that a few months have passed, our tutor organised a costume parade in the local shopping centre for us to show off our costumes. I altered the dress that I originally made to fit a friend so that I could wear it and began looking into hairstyles. It was a task I was simultaneously terrified of and looking forward to. As you might know, 1830s evening hairstyles are WILD. Very big, very pompous, lots of hair and totally the best styles the past has to offer. Quite intimidating at first glance but after some deliberation I managed to figure out a way to do it that would both look good and be fairly easy to do myself (Spoiler: I didn’t style my hair completely on my own but I think it is definitely possible). If I can do it, so can you!
As I have mentioned, I don’t have a lot of hair. The solution for that: a hairpiece! I have not looked into period styling methods but I am almost certain that this is authentic. I know for sure that lots of hairpieces were used in the 1870s and adjacent eras so it is very likely that people in the 1830s did this as well. I still had a half-wig that I bought a few years ago for some reason. The best base would have been horsehair braid reinforced with millinery wire, I had to do with buckram. Let’s go through this step by step:
- Make a paper pattern and check the scale
- Stretch a small buckram circle into a slightly convex shape so it can sit smoothly on the back of the head
- Cut the reinforcement structure from buckram and cover with hair. I have sewn it at the edge and glued it on the area in between
- Arrange on the base circle and secure with handstitching
- Add decoration
- Done!
Now onto how intend for this to be worn. In a lot of paintings and fashion plates you can see that the hair at the top of the head is parted into three sections visible from the front. There are two curled sections on the sides and one that is pulled back in in the shape of the triangle, the point being in front. The back section is combed upwards and can be braided elaborately. A simple middle parting seems to be the prevalent style in most paintings and fashion plates but I am going to focus on the first mentioned option here. So my idea is the following: braid the triangle section and the back section at the back of the head, just below where the headpiece will be placed. The latter should be pinned in place with some bobby pins, then the two braids are wrapped around the hairpiece to both hide the buckram base and secure it further.
This might not be the same for everybody but I’ve found that my hair type curls much better and holds the shape for longer when I put it on plain curl rollers. They don’t need to be heatable or anything extraordinary like that, just do it immediately after a shower and let the hair dry in that shape. It’s also not damaging the hair like a curling iron would do so that’s a big plus! Once I took out the rollers I immediately sprayed the curls with hairspray to prolong the effect. In retrospect I’ve come to realise that I should have pinned them up to sit on my temples for a more accurate look… next time. In that moment I was just so happy to have pulled off the Apollo’s Knot, it was like I had levelled up. I made the whole hairpiece in one afternoon which is really good considering how much it enhanced the whole look, excellent input output ratio.
What do I learn from this? Face your fears, step up your game where you feel like it needs improvement and don’t make it too complicated for yourself!
Thanks for reading ♥️
Empress of Buttons 