Hair, hair, hair. Let’s talk about hair. It’s such an important marker of beauty in any given period, for men as well but especially for women. I always figured this is why historical movies can be so reluctant to portray women in period hairstyles if those hairstyles happen to conflict with modern standards of beauty. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a period flick and been so impressed with the work of the costume designer, only to have their meticulous efforts spoiled by the shoddy hair and makeup design.
^^^Yep, you too, Les Mis movie. What is with this hair??? My modern eyes say, “hey, it’s cute,” and my 1830s eyes say, “wtf is this bedhead? put your hair up, girl!”
This seems to be a thing for actresses more than actors, and I don’t know whether it’s the actresses who demand that they not be “uglied” up, or the director, or the hair designer him/herself, but whoever it is needs to grow up and realize that hot women will still be hot in 1830s sausage curls and apollo knots, and hot men will still be hot in mutton chops and under-the-chin beards. Sorry, /end rant. But really, movie industry, can we get on this?
So, ca. 1830 ladies’ hair. The most stereotypical image of this period’s hairstyles is the ringlets on the sides and the coiffure à la chinoise up the back, garnished with all kinds of wild shit, from real flowers to tortoiseshell combs, from lace veils to ostrich plumes, from strings of pearls to turbans:
Coiffure à la chinoise is a hairstyle accomplished by pulling the majority of the (very long) hair tightly back and twisting it up into huge loops on top of the head. This political cartoon (which I’ll discuss at more length some other time, because it is awesome) shows the scalp-tugging process of hairdressing:
Professional hairdressing was mostly a men’s occupation ca. 1830, though many ladies’ maids were also used to do a lady’s hair on a day-to-day basis. The professional hairdresser would make house-calls for special occasion hairdos, especially for very wealthy clients, but he also worked out of a brick-and-mortar shop. These hairdressing salons, much like those of today, were usually located in fancy shopping districts, especially the upscale shopping galleries like the Galerie Vivienne or the Passage des Panoramas (more on these in a later post–I love 1830s shopping galleries). The professional hairdresser advertised through fashion plates, which often give the name both of the dressmaker and the hairdresser whose fashions are being featured. There are also fashion plates just for hairstyles or hat styles, which show a front and back view for each. The hairdresser’s art was just that: an art. His hairstyles were living works of art, statues sitting on top of a lady’s head, and he could command fees accordingly. He would be employed either by the very wealthy or for special events. Less wealthy women could have their maids do their hair, or else do it themselves.
The typical process of 1830 hairdressing began by parting the hair into three sections: one shorter one on each side of the forehead and one longer one in the back. The hair’s part is sometimes located in the center, sometimes on the side, and sometimes v-shaped, like this:
The side sections are curled into ringlets with curling tongs (or else with curling papers or cloths), while the back section is yanked (painfully) into those loops and braids and pinned into place. Pomade is used to keep the hair on top and in the back smooth and straight and shiny. Lots of fake hair pieces are used, too, since of course not everyone is equally endowed, hair-wise.
^^^Here are some mid-19th century false curls mounted on a ribbon, to be tied on the head.
^^^This is another set of ca. 1830 false curls, with its own storage box and all! Of course, when I say “false,” I don’t mean the hair: it’s real human hair. This is the sort of thing that Fantine’s glorious blonde hair would have gone towards making. There are also fake hairpieces for the back of the hair, fake curls, fake loops, fake braids, and so on, but I haven’t yet come across any surviving examples. Female Enjolras would have had to make generous use of these when dressing as a woman, since her hair is cut short for her masculine disguise. (Oh Jesus, let’s not consider the possibility of a side story where female Enjolras ends up unwittingly using hairpieces made from Fantine’s hair…………O__O)
^^^Another late 1830s hairpiece. Most of these fake hairpieces would be intended to be used underneath a morning cap or turban, with just the curls sticking out the front, like so:
This makes it a little easier to see how the fake curls could be tied on with a ribbon or fixed with a net and still not be too obvious.
Back to the coiffure à la chinoise. This style supposedly got its name because 1820s/30s people thought it looked like the traditional hairstyles of Chinese women. (I can kinda see that…..? Though really it looks more like the traditional topknot of Chinese men.) The giant hair loops of the coiffure à la chinoise are sometimes called “apollo knots” as well, though really that applies better to loops like these ladies have, which are imitations of those seen on antique Greek statues of Apollo:
These ladies also have hair pins shaped like a “cupid’s arrow,” which seems to have been a trend at one point:
There are plenty of apollo knots and chinoise hairdos in this period, but really, the hairstyles of the late 1820s/early 1830s are actually quite varied, much more so than I thought before I started researching this stuff. The size and number of the curls, whether they are pinned up on the head or allowed to fall in ringlets alongside the face, or whether there are even curls at all; whether the back of the hair is pulled into loops, swept up in ringlets, braided into a crown shape, and whether it’s decorated with feathers, braids, beads, pearls, hair combs, pins, flowers, veils, ribbons, etc.–all of these points vary widely, sometimes from year to year, but also within each year, according to the individual’s taste.
I’m just going to put up a bunch of hairstyles from between 1825 and 1835, and you can see the wide variety for yourselves:
Remember, all of these examples are from 1825-1835. The smoother, sleeker styles generally tend to be towards the end of this period, and the curlier styles towards the beginning of the period, but sleek styles appear in the late ‘20s and curly styles appear into the ‘40s, so it’s hard to generalize. All the beauty in variety!
