About Victorian hair

    The book "Compacts and Cosmetics(Beauty from Victorian Times to the Present Day) by Madeleine Marsh affirms that the luxuriant looks were integral to feminine charm and lack of make-up was compensated for by extravagant hair care. Beauty manuals recommended brushing the hair for ten minutes minimum, up to four times a day... "For evening, dinner hair ought to be dressed in four rolls either side or finished off behind with a Marie Antoinette chignon, frizzed very much", advised The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine in 1863.

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    If the hair didn't frizz naturally, or was simply too thin for fashionable hairstyles, they could try a wig. Hairdressers offered everything from curled fringes to full on wigs. Wigs were not without their problems. Cartoonist illustrated them falling off,and as contemporary photographs demonstrate, all too often false hairpieces were anything but invisible, sitting on top of the head like a small furry animal. Also the false hair could transmit the skin diseases of its original owner.

    The alternative to a wig were frizzing your own hair with curling papers and pins which, as the Baronesse observed, was an uncomfortable process, or using curling tongs.
    Despite the risks of burning, cutling an crimping irons were standart dressing table items. Various new models were introduced in the Victorian and Edwardian periods and if you came up with a good design, it could make your fortune.

    Elaborate Victorian hairstyles, and drying effects of curling, stimulateddeman for pomades, hair oils and bandolines(gum-containing setting lotions). Victorian Newspapers were filled with advertisments for hair restorers, pomades, dyes, but curiously to modern eyes the one product missing from a seemingly endless list of lotions and potions was Shampoo, which in the 19th century had a slightly different meaning: the word shampoo derives from the Hindi verb champo, meaning to press or massage.

    Every etiquette guide stressed that washing and personal hygiene were the very cornerstones of beauty, virtue and domestic harmony. Harriet Hubbard Ayer said: "To my thinking one must be clean before one can be really good. Dirt and religion do not blend." She also recomended  a minimum of one bath a day(preferably two). in order to avoid "the sin of dowdiness" which could cost a woman both her good looks and her husband.

Books: "Compacts and Cosmetics(Beauty from Victorian times to the present day)" by Madeleine Marsh