Muskaan Khan Friday 18th, 2021
Hair History: Victorian Era
The Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her
death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian
period.
About the Victorian Era: In the Victorian era, a woman’s hair was often thought to be one
of her most valuable assets. Some women in Victorian times often had long hair, down to the
ground. Hairstyles and length during this age were a re ection of a person’s station in life or
class. Hairstyles breathed elegance and purity,
often worn up and using ringlet curls to adorn the
face. It was vital during the Victorian era that all
hair styled should be neat, without a single strand
out of place. Brushing your hair 100 times before
bed, was a common saying during this time. During
this ear hairstyles also mirrored the aspirations
and social changes occurring within society, such
as the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rise of
the middle classes and brought new fashions for
clothes and hair. During this era, hairdressers
became popular as women took interest in getting
their hair styled professionally. Women in this age also began using soaps to clean their hair, but
this act would strip away oils, leaving the hair stringy and dry. This lead the way for new hair
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products being sold to restore the hair’s lustre. Styles of hair varied quite a bit throughout the
nearly 7 decades of Queen Victoria’s reign, with everything from simple middle parts to elaborate
hairpieces made from human hair being in fashion. Middle parts were all the rage as British
fashion mirrored French styles. Accessories such as combs, pearls, hats and bonnets each had
their time in the spotlight throughout the Victorian age.
3 Major Events of the Victorian Era: The rst major event in the Victorian Era would have to be
when queen Victoria, a powerful woman,
ascended to the throne, dominating the political
world. Victoria, who ascended the throne at age
18 following the death of her uncle, William IV, is
Britain’s second-longest reigning monarch
(surpassed by Queen Elizabeth II). At just 4-
feet-11-inches tall, her rule during one of
Britain’s greatest eras saw the country serving
as the world’s biggest empire, with one-fourth
of the global population owing allegiance to the
queen. During the era symbolized by the reign
of a female monarch, Queen Victoria, women did
not have the right to vote, sue, or - if they were
married - own property. At the same time,
women participated in the paid workforce in
increasing numbers following the Industrial
Revolution. Feminist ideas spread among the
educated middle classes, discriminatory laws
were repealed, and the women's suffrage
movement gained momentum in the last years of the Victorian era, all symbolized by the reign of a
female monarch, Queen Victoria. Secondly, during the Victorian era “On The Origin Of Species”
was published. Written by Charles Darwin and published in 1859, it was the most revolutionary
scienti c work of its era and one that still proves controversial today. Upending centuries of
religious belief with the theory that life on the planet evolved from previous forms to survive,
Darwin changed a huge chunk of biology. Darwin’s idea of evolution was in uenced by two
sources of authority that gained signi cance, namely the authority of science and the authority
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of progress. The Victorian Era brought sweeping
changes to Britain and was marked by the authority of
science replacing the authority of literal reading of
holy texts or theology. The philosophers of this era
considered utility and progress as the essence of a
new enlightened age. The people who were initially
known as natural philosophers began to be called
scientists during this period. Darwin’s theory of
evolution changed the way Victorians thought. His
theories gave the people more freedom to explore and
accept science, which often contradicted the views of
the church. Creating a debate about the purpose of
nature and how life forms develop that continues to
the present, Darwin earns his place on the list of most
important events of the Victorian era. Third and lastly,
during the Victorian Era, the Irish Potato Famine took place. Also known as the “Great Famine”,
it began with a group of microorganisms that wiped out most of the potato crop on which two-
fths of the Irish population relied. In 1845, Ireland's potato crop was destroyed by infestation
with the fungal disease known as potato blight. The disease
rotted the potatoes in the ground, ruining the principal food
source for millions of people. The blight lasted for another
four years, causing illness and mass starvation across Ireland
and killing a million people out of a population of eight
million. Many Irish labourers and farmers worked on estates
owned by British landlords. Following the blight, the tenants
were expected to still pay rent despite having no income from
their crops. This prompted the eviction of over a quarter of a
million people between 1845 and 1854 and led to the mass
migration of a million people, looking to start a new life
abroad – many of them in America and Britain.
3 In uential People of the Victorian Era: Queen
Victoria was a fashion icon in her own right. Little is known
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about how her hair was cut, but she did have periodic haircuts by the royal hairdressers. When it
comes to hairstyling, this icon kept things pretty simple. In nearly all of her portraits, Queen
Victoria parted her hair down the center, looped her glossy hair around the sides, and secured
what remained in an updo. The fanciest styles we’ve seen her exhibit involved piling her braids
high on her head, but she seemed to do this mostly when she was younger. In one 1935 self-
portrait as Princess of Kent (below), Princess Victoria also sports some
fancy curls at the side of her face, in addition to the
braid-crown worn at the top of her head. In her later
years, Queen Victoria seems to have opted mostly for
the simplest possible hairstyle and was more often
than not photographed with just a bit of tightly pulled
back hair peeping out from under a veil, bonnet, or
hat. Furthermore, Queen Victoria had brown hair but
as she gradually got older, her hair turned grey. The
styles of the late 1830s, consisting of a close- tting
bodice, natural waist, and bell-shaped skirt, were
particularly becoming to the 4'11" queen. Her lack of height and a
tendency toward plumpness made her look best in simple well-tailored
clothes such as riding habits. Victoria set the style for wearing a scarlet & gold tunic, navy riding
skirt, and small plumed hat for reviewing the troops that
is still worn to today by her great- great-granddaughter
Elizabeth. Like most women of her time, Victoria tried to
dress to please the men in her life. Her rst prime minister,
Lord Melbourne, advised her on all matters, including what to
wear. Later Victoria's beloved husband Prince Albert
would do this. She always wanted her clothes, and those of her
court, to be of British manufacture. Her Majesty had a
propensity for draping herself in shawls and overloading
her dresses with lace, ribbons, bows, and ounces. Albert was
fond of oral trimmings and Victoria would have huge swathes
of blossoms and grasses, often real, on her gowns in addition to other decorations. Fashions of
the 1850s for wider sleeves, tiered skirts and horizontal design were not attering to small women
such as the queen. Victoria frequently neglected to scale down her accessories to suit her
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diminutive size. She adored jewelry and usually wore it in abundance, though the large pieces she
favoured could be overwhelming. The queen always wore numerous rings, brooches, and
bracelets and was never without the one set with Albert's miniature. It graced her arm from their
engagement to the day she died. The obsession with women's hair became almost a fetish during
the Victorin age, which was
famously illustrated by the case
of the Seven Sutherland Sisters.
Born to a poor turkey farmer in
Cambria, New York, the sisters
were encouraged by their father
to perform, singing and playing
various musical instruments.
However, it was their hair that was
the draw. To capitalize on their
assets, their father created a
range of hair products. The
sisters had 37 feet of hair among
them which they never cut,
coloured or styled, they only let it down. Sarah, Victoria, Isabella, Grace, Naomi, Dora, and Mary
were their names. Flaunting all that awesome hair onstage wasn’t quite enough to launch the
Sutherlands from abject poverty to riches, so the sisters’ father, the Rev. Fletcher Sutherland,
concocted a patent hair-growing tonic. Because Victorian women coveted the sister’s luscious
locks, the cash came ooding in. The family grew rich beyond its wildest imaginations, as the
sisters knocked serious political issues off the newspapers’ front
page with their outrageous celebrity antics. By the mid-1880s, none of
the sisters could walk down the street, their owing tresses dragging
behind them like dress trains, without being mobbed by starstruck
fans. Eventually, they joined Barnum and Bailey's circus and toured
widely, appearing at the rst World's Fair in 1881. It was said that
envious fans would try to steal locks of hair as keepsakes.
5 Trends of the Victorian Era: At the top of the list of trends of
the Victorian Era, we would have to put ‘long hair’. Hair was long in the
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Victorian age. Extremely long. Haircuts weren’t exactly a thing yet for
women. They did occasionally trim split ends or even singe them, but long
hair was viewed as being ultra-feminine and desirable. We can nd plenty of
photos of women wearing their long, wavy
hair down. However, loose hair wasn’t
something that “respectable” women would
wear in public and was mostly a style used
for the sake of art. As in many societies,
religious doctrine was a factor in the policing
of Victorian women’s hair, mandating that it
be covered or done up, particularly if the
woman was married. Letting one’s hair down was commonly seen
as brazen and immodest, even sinful. Girls often wore their hair
down, but were expected to begin wearing it up around the age
of 15 or 16. An important rite of passage for an adolescent girl
during this time was the moment she began to wear her hair up.
Previously it would have been worn loose or in plaits and tied up
with a ribbon. More often than not the women with long,
cascading hair were models and actresses intended to depict
intimacy and romanticism. Most respectable women wore their
hair in an intricately braided or twisted-up do. Long hair
styled in an updo was the way most women, especially
upper-class women, wore their hair during this era. Another
trend of the Victorian age would have to be hairpieces. For
women to create more elaborate looks, they would use
false pieces, usually made from human hair. These pieces
were much easier to style and also added volume to updos.
They were essentially bundles of hair with a loop at the end
that you could easily wrap around your own hair. These
aren’t that much different from the wefts we use today but
they look a little bit more complicated to use and were
mixed with clip-in buns and braids to create the signature
looks of the time. It was during this era that real hair
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became more widely available too and so there was no longer
the need to use animal hair as an alternative. Moreover,
chignons began to move towards the back of the head in the
1860s, mimicking changes in dress style. Huge hoops reached
max fullness and women began wearing dresses that were full
in the back, giving the silhouette more of an S-shape.
Another trend included victorian women having rats in their
hair? No, not rodents. Rats (or ratts) were used to increase
volume. They were usually made from the loose hair collected
from a woman’s comb,
which would be stuffed
into a hair receiver — a
small box or dish kept on
the vanity table. Rats were used as padding to uff out the
sides or top of the hair, often in order to create a more
balanced silhouette in which the head appeared to be
approximately the same size as the waist. Lastly, crimping
also became a trend of the Victorian Era. Hot irons were
introduced as hair styling devices during the age, which
resulted in the popularity
of crimped updos. One of these styles, known as the "Marcel
Wave," involved using a hot iron on the hair to create a loose
wavy updo. The Victorian Era's predilection for accessories
made a big difference when it came to the crimping style—the
waves look great when tied back with combs, owers, ribbons,
and strings of beads. One more thing that many Victorian
women did with curling irons was cut the hair around their
faces very short, and then crimp it, leaving a sort of curly
fringe around their faces.
Below are some images of modern day hairstyles in uenced
by the Victorian Era:
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