This is my January entry to Trystan's Accessories Challenge! Yay! I'm now 2 for 4 months, but given that next month is jewelry, I think I'm safe for that one, too :)
NOTE: I wasn't originally going to post this tutorial, because the pictures didn't turn out as well as I hoped and I kinda dropped the ball on the last part of it, but all of my clamoring fans (and by all I mean 3) begged, so here you go!
A few months ago I ran across this gorgeous image:
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| Miss Mary Tadman by John Smart, 1809. The Fitzwilliam Museum. |
She really struck me.
Not only is she lovely, but her hair is beautiful and unusual. I love the braid that goes across the top of
her forehead and I was really charmed by the tiny curls that accent the style.
I decided that I wanted to try to do this hairstyle at my
next fancy Regency event, so our recent 12th Night party was the
perfect opportunity.
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| Mostly Successful Regency Hair |
I’m not 100% happy
with the results and it is more inspired-by than copied, but I do have some
good tricks. I took pictures of parts of
it, so I thought I’d share with you on how I did it.
I should give some caveats
- I’m not great with hair. I wear my hair in a ponytail or a bun
95% of the time. I’ve owned the
same set of hot rollers since 2001 and they are rarely used. I have only the most basic knowledge of
hairstyling, so please don’t think that I am some kind of expert! I know my hair usually looks pretty good
in period stuff, but that is because of…
- I have a ton of hair. It is long and thick and
ridiculous. This is pretty
frustrating in everyday life, but GREAT for reenacting. Here’s a picture of me with my hair
freshly styled from the salon:
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| And my hair will never, ever look this good again. Ever. |
So yeah. A lot.
I can’t really give any tips for those of you who don’t have mops on
your head, but there are a few places where I know that hair rats, falls, and various
other fluffy things will help greatly!
This hairstyle started out the night before when I showered
and then let my hair air dry. I didn’t
use a blowdryer or a flat iron. I did
this because I have a lot of natural wavy texture to my hair, and I wanted
volume. It makes a HUGE difference in
volume if my hair is flatironed or not.
If you have naturally straight hair, you may want to put it in braids
and let it dry. This will give you some
extra oophm, which is really important for the big bun.
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| Textured hair |
The next morning, I put 4 tiny rollers in my hair. I dampened my hair before I put the curlers
in. I rolled the sides of my bangs and 1
very small long piece on each side (maybe 1/8” of hair?). The key here is not to roll all the way up to
the scalp. You can see from the image
that her curls are low, so I stopped around the level of my eyebrows. If I had smaller curlers
than these, I would have used them. As
it is, even these tiny ones are a bit too big.
I left these in all day- taking them out was almost the last thing I
did.
When it came down to the actual business of doing the
hairstyle, I started out by making the braid that would go across my
forehead. I started mine at below my ear
near the base of my skull, but if you have shorter hair, you could start it
just behind your ear. Remember you will
lose some length with the braid, so make sure it is long enough! You aren’t doing anything with this braid
just yet, so just let it chill out on the side of your head.
Next, I made a high bun on the back of my head with the top
1/3 of my hair. This was put into a
loose bun as the sole purpose is to give fullness to the rest of the pouf. If you don’t have a lot of hair, this is a
great place to put in a hair rat or a clip-in bun.
Once I had my foundation bun, I began building the rest of
it. Taking 1-inch sections of hair, I
pinned them to the base of the bun, then twisted what was left into ropes. I wrapped the ropes around the base bun, then
let them unwind a bit before pinning them down.
I know that is a little hard to explain, and I’m sorry I don’t have a
picture showing the twisting/pinning! The reason for doing this is
that the untwisting allows the pieces to have awesome volume, so they look much
bigger than they are! Do this with the
rest of your hair until you only have one ½ inch piece left. I left one at the back of my head.
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| You can see the twists beginning here |
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| And you can see here how they wrap around the foundation bun. I wish I made them a little tighter! You can also see the hilarious faux aigrette I have from my bangs! I was intending to curl these, but I eventually just pinned the sticky-upy parts down. |
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| The leftover 1/2 inch piece |
You’ll want to split this into two separate pieces so you
have two little wisps of hair. Pin those
wisps into the base of your bun, then curl the pieces that hang out with a very
small curling iron. Pin these curls into
the bun so they add some nice, curling focal points. Unfortunately you can’t really see these in
my pictures, but I promise they were there!
Finally, it is time to deal with that braid. Pull it across, low on the forehead, and put in a few pins along the way. Once I had mine pinned in, I took the elastic band out of the end and just pinned down the tail (and used a ton of hairspray). I didn’t want the modern elastic showing!
Now it is time to take out your curlers! Hopefully they will be tight little pert
things, so make sure you spray the dickens out of them right when you take them
out of the curlers. You can pin these up
and back as you so desire, making sure they frame your face. Our inspiration girl has asymmetrical curls,
but you see plenty of examples where they match on either side, so it can be
whatever you prefer.
Now, just empty out a can of hairspray on your head and you
are good to go!
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| Thanks go Gloria (http://inthelongrun.wordpress.com/) for this photo! This is at the end of the night, so you can see how the curls started to loosen up. |
When it was time to go to bed, I was really drunk tired, so
I didn’t want to deal with taking it down.
I pinned my curls up onto my forehead, wrapped a giant handkerchief
around my head, and slept like a baby.
When I woke up the next morning, I was astonished that it still looked
pretty good! I had to fiddle with the curls
a bit since they had loosened up and were wonkified, but it was awesome that I
didn’t have to worry about my hair for our breakfast!
So there you go! I hope this is helpful- I wish I was better at describing how I did things and paid more attention when I was taking the pictures. Do you have any Regency hair tutorials? Please link to them in the comments- I'd love to see!
