How did their hair look so pouffy yet elegant?

It seemed a good Saturday morning activity to figure out how those Edwardian ladies did their hair. I have always envied that pouffy yet elegant look.

My hair's not long enough to try it out at the moment - but the Every Women's Encyclpedia of 1910-12, published online by chestofbooks.com, has some complex suggestions: torsades, puffs, swathes. Beyond me, way beyond me.

Luckily, Caty135 has made some video demonstrations of a couple of hairstyles of the era: Gibson Girl styles, and finger waves. The 1910s were at the very end of the era of must-have long hair - when the War came, women started to cut it short, for practicality.

Washing my hair: a real excuse

When I was at university a friend of mine went through a phase of washing her hair with egg yolk, beer, and anything that did not contain the mixture of chemicals that make up shampoo. It seemed to work (though the egg went wrong if you rinsed it in hot water) so after a while we left her to get on with it. I should ask her what she uses these days.

The link to 1911? They hadn't invented those shampoos yet. And if you wanted to wash your hair, you used soap (not good, for anyone who has tried this) or something gentler like egg yolk. What's more, washing your hair was a real palaver. For a start, your hair was waist length at least. Then, there was no shower, so you did it over the bath - and hot water wasn't necessarily on tap either.

Some instructions for washing your hair from the New York Times of 1910 explain that some specialists recommend doing so once a fortnight - though the more reasonable do it once a month or every six weeks. It's an elaborate routine: comb it out, apply tonic to the scalp, rub soap into a nail brush and apply to the hair, rinse four times. You might also want to make a special soap by boiling normal soap down to a jelly.

And then you had to dry it. Definitely a perfectly genuine excuse for turning down a date.


Sources / further info:
Random history - History of Shampoo
Lydia Joyce blog - History of C19th Hairwashing

Were roses still red?

Ah, Valentine's Day. I wondered what it would have been like a century ago. I have to admit to some grumpiness: I was hoping to discover that it hadn't been invented, or that it was only celebrated in America, or perhaps even that celebrating it was considered immoral, loose, shocking.

First shock: we've been sending Valentine's cards in the UK longer than they have been sent in the US (at least according to Wikipedia). Yup, we even had Valentine's Cards factory-made in Victorian times, all covered in first real then paper lace. There is a collection of 400 Victorian Valentine's Cards in the Priest's House Museum in Dorset and more at the web-based Greetings Cards Museum. It wasn't till about 1850 that an innovative American woman, one Esther Howland, started selling them in the US - a remarkable early businesswoman, she seems to have made her fortune. Following her start, Valentines got more and more elaborate as the nineteenth century moved on, at least according to the American Antiquarian Society.

Which brings us, almost, to 1911. Scanning the internet produces Valentine's postcards from that year, mostly covered in cherubs. The messages are different from today's:  - I greet thee Valentine! or,

Goodness gracious isn't it fine
To be somebody's Valentine

I quite liked the two Valentine's Cards below, the one on the right more for the Art Nouveau swirling dress than anything else. Most of the images of the cards online are from auction sites. There is something very sorrowful about a Valentine's card, sent a hundred years ago, up for sale. I can't decide if the thought makes me like Valentine's day less or more. Treasure your cards, people, and make sure they are passed on to others who will look after them too!

1911 postcard, sighted ebid 2011
(no copyright info available)

c.1900-1910 US, Wikimedia (creative commons)