Hairdo – Fashion Through Herstory

1825s silly, silly evening hair

Published on May 27, 2017 by fashionthrougherstory6 Comments

One of the things I got the most compliments on wearing the new 1825s outfit was the crazy as hair I sported.

There’s a party on my head…

Since I don’t have a lot of hair on my own – modern everyday style beats once in a while historical hair-possibility’s, I needed to do something drastic to disguise the modern me for the upcoming historical ball.

My first thought was to use my “go to” solution – A turban.
It’s easy, cute, comfortable and perfectly accurate for the time period.

But then I would need some fake curls for the bangs…
..and those 1820-30s hair are pretty fun and crazy…
..Maybe… I could…what if I…Hm, this flower wreath looks cute…and this braid is almost a perfect match for my hair…

And then I was caught.

I searched my bookshelf, my bins of hair-accessorize and the box of neatly rolled spool of fake hair I’d cut from a wig a few years back and never used.
Collecting the material.

After reading through “The laced Angels” blogpost about her 1830s hairdo I felt confident enough to give it a try.

I started by cutting apart one plastic “doughnut” (the kind ballet dancers/gymnasts use, which suddenly got really popular a few years back)

Then I separated a few of the curled pieces of fake hairand twisted them around the doughnut/crescent, adding glue where needed.To make it sit more secure on my short hair I added two wig clasps to the ends of the piece.

Then I cut the black elastic from a hairband-braid, and glued it together to form a circle.Not a nice joint, but it will be covered by other things later so I’m not overly concerned about it.

I Braided a few of the other pieces of fake hair,and put together a the rest into two clusters of curls for the bangs.All the pieces lain out roughly the way the’r suppose to sit on the head.

Here’s my first try at putting it on:
Starting with a back combing of my own bangs, and a brown hairnet, to keep all the short hairs from acting up.

Then I pinned/clipped the crescent on top of my head.

I added the two curly bits to the front/side of my face

and put the two braids on to cover the edge of the cresent.

Finally I added a wreath of purple plastic flowers

As you can see, I definitely needed to do something about the back of my head. Something I fixed by re-arranging the hanging braid and adding a white flower over loops of pearls stitched to the back of my the thick braid.

A few days before the event I dyed my hair a bit darker red to match the hairpieces.
Blending together much better now.

Here’s a few pic from the photoshoot:

Regency hairdo

Published on November 20, 2014 by fashionthrougherstory5 Comments

I’d be the first to admit that I know nothing about hair – My own are really short and don’t need much attentions, and when I had long hair a couple of years ago, I just wore it in a ponytail or bun.

But with great costumes comes great hair styles… or something like that.

So today I will show you the hairstyle I did on my sister for the Regency ball.

The day before the ball she pinned her hair up in curlers while still wet, and then slept on it.

The first thing to do was to remove all the hair pins.

And shake the hair out, using the fingers to get it really big and fluffy.

Then I gathered most of the hair in a ponytail, leaving some hanging in the front. Using the ponytail as a base I attached a hair doughnut to add some volume and structure to the do.

I then twisted and pinned the rest of the hair up in messy curls

Lastly I added the golden headband and secured it with some boby-pins.

The finished hairdo at the ball.

I could also have left some of the front hair curls hanging to get another effect.

The finished hair do at the photoshoot.

Peace of cake.

1880s Evening Hairstyle

Published on January 26, 2014 by fashionthrougherstory1 Comment

The “accessory” for my 1880s evening gown which caused my head to hurt most was the head itself. Who the h-l do you get a lovely opera style hairdo with my short and klingy hair.

This was what I wanted

I tried a lots of different alternatives. Like faux hair and braids, curling and twisting but nothing got me even close to what I needed to achive.

So I reluctantly pulled out my “new” wig. It is from the same company where I bought a lovely long haired wig for my medieval hairdo, but this one is just horrid.

Promo pic.

And in real life.

It is so plasic looking in both the colour and the shine, it feels realy “costumy”. And besides it is way to big. The only “good” thing about it is the fact that it don’t have bangs. But with two days left to the bal, I needed to give it a try.

So I re-read the chapter on “late victorian hairstyles” in Historical Wigstyling, and got to work, testing the methods on a smal piece of the wig first.

Roling a piece of “hair” to a thread spool (I curently don’t own real hair curlers), then setting it, using steam from my steam-iron.

The result looked perfect.

Time to move on to the actual wig.

I started by separding and creating some bangs, which I curled on hairpins and and more spools of thread, and then secured with pins.

Then I covered the rest of the wig with a cotton sheat and steamed the bangs, letting it sett over night.

Then I just grabed pieces of hair, twisted, pinned and braided until I got a cool looking hairstyle.

But when I put it on my head it looked ridiculus.Like something from a Tim Burton movie.

No! Lets try again.

Trying to keep the hair a bit more to the back of the head, and not so much upwards proved to be a lot easier. So now I got a nice, elegant hairdo.

But once again: Nice on the dummy – Stupid on me.

I feelt like a ginger prostitute in some movie about Sparta. Not good.

Right about now I started to panic.

It was the evening before the bal and I was totaly lost.

Thank good for internet, and lovely helpful people, who told me the hairstyle I was trying to build was not really 1880s (more 1870s) and that this is what I should be trying for instead.So after studing a few more pictures of simular hairstyles, I feelt it would be do-able using my own hair and some false hairpeces.

I also wanted to wear this tiara, since I wouldn’t wear any other juwelery.

So, I grabbed my siccors and cut all the remaining hair of my old (lovey) wig.

Buying some proper haircurlers.

And got to work curling and steaming again.

I then curled my own bangs on smal stripes of fabric, soaked them in wather and sleept on it.

The next morning I removed the curling strips.Then I put a cap on and got on the train to the capital, and the bal.

When arriving at my hotel I emedetly started working.

Begining to make smal tufts, in my own hair, to secure the faux bun onto. Cowering the back of my head with a hair net, to keep all the short flying hairs in place. Then I loosened the faux hair from the curlers and started pinning and winding them into a bun on the back of my head. I then frizzed the bangs some more, and attached the tiara with bobypins. The last step was to attach a few hanging curls on the back of the bun.

And the finished hairdo

And it still looked pretty hours later.I’m so happy with how it turned out, and even got some nice copliments on it. Maybe next time I don’t have to worry so much.