HISTORY OF STYLES

Ancient World. In early and primitive socities the simplest hair style, worn by the common people, was long or cropped hair usually held in a fillet or band. Aristocrats developed distinctive and more complex styles. Sumerian noblewomen. for example, dressed
their hair in a heavy, netted chignon, rolls, and plaits around the head or Ietting it fall thickly over the shoulders. They also powdered it with gold dust or scented yellow starch and adorned it with gold hairpins and other ornaments. Babilonian and Assyrian men dyed their long hair and square beards black and crimped and curled them with curling irons. sometimes wigs were worn. Persian nobles also curled their hair and beards and stained them red with henna.

Egyptian noblemen and noblewomen clipped their hair close; later, for coolness and cleanliness in the hot climate they shaved their heads with bronze razors. On ceremonial occasions, for protection from the sun, they wore heavy, usually black wigs. These were in short curly shapes or long and full in curls or braids and were adorned with ivory knobbed hairpins, fillets, fresh flowers or gold ornaments. Men shaved their faces and wore stiff false beards. In classical Greece, men wore short hair and often beards. Later they were shaved. Women's long hair was drawn back loosely or bound into a chignon, later a melon shape. Both sexes wore fillets, and the upper classes used curling irons. Some women dyed their hair red (or in Athens even blue, dusted with gold, white, or red powder), and others adorned it with flowers, ribbons, and jeweled tiaras.

In austere republican Rome, men and women generally followed simple Greek styles, but under the empire the upper classes used curling irons and the men dusted their hair with colored powder or gold dust. Women dyed their hair bond with yellow soap or wore ebony wigs or wigs made from the blond hair of captive barbarians. Their hair was piled high in curls and braids, sometimes arranged on crescent-shaped wire frames. Throughout the ancient world hair- dressing and shaving were accomplished by domestic slaves or in public barbershops. 

The Non-Western World-Tbe Muslim World and the East Among Muslims, traditionally, the hair was modestly concealed in public under the man's headdoth, turban, or fez or the woman's veil. Both men and women, however, attended their respective hammams (public baths), where the men were shaved (sometimes the whole head except for the long topknot) and their beards were trimmed. The women's long hair was washed and often given a henna rinse.

In China, men traditionally shaved the front hair and combed the back hair into a queue braided with horsehair or black silk. Worn by the Manchus and imposed by them on their Chinese subjects in the 17th century as a sign of submission, the queue was also a mark of dignity and manhood. To pull it was a grave insult. Chinese women combed their hair back, sometimes under a bandeau, into a low knot, which might be decorated with jeweled combs, hairpins, or flowers. Unmarried girls wore long plaits.

In Japan, traditionally, men usually shaved the front and top of the head, leaving a little stiif pigtail at the back of the crown. Women's hair in the medieval period streamed down their backs. After the introduction of pommade in the 17 th century, women's hair was swept and arranged with combs, bars, ribbons, and long ornarnental hairpins, revealing the nape of the neck, which was thought to be especially appealing, The Geisha's lacquered coiffures, which often were wigs, were especially elaborate.

Africa Africans developed complex hair styles indicative of status. Some ivolved shaving the head, dyeing the hair with red earth and grease, bleaching it with ammonia, Or stiffening it with dung. Among the Masai, for example, nonwarriors and women shaved their heads while warriors tied their front hair into three sections of tiny braids and their back hair into a waist-length queue. Mangbetu women arranged thin plaits over a cylinder-shaped basket frame with a flared top and stuck it full of long flat bone needles used also to groom their finger- nails. Such hair styles took hours to achieve and were left untouched for weeks. Somewhat simpler were the styles of Miango maidens, who combed their kerchief-covered hair back into a long queue tied with leafy branches, or of Ibo girls, who shaved their heads and thereafter let the hair grow only according to an elaborate pattern chalked on their skulls.

Pre-Columbian America In the pre-Columbian era the heads of North American East Coast Indian men were generally entirely shaven, with shell or stone knives, save for a ridge, or comb, of hair along the crown of the head. Plains Indians wore two long plaits, as Indian women did generally.

Farther south in more civilized regions, more complex styles developed, such as the large whorled squash-blossom arrangement over the ears of marriageable Hopi girls. Mixtec women drew their hair into a bun under a horned turban, while Aztec women braided their hair with colored material and wound it round their heads, as they still do in some parts of Mexico. Among Aztec warriors a ridge of hair indicated that he had taken many prisoners. Maya nobles, who wore high head dresses, app ar to have shaved their artificially elongated skulls. Inca chiefs wore relatively short hair, with a headband wrapped around five times; nobles and commoners had progressively longer hair and fewer turns of the headband.

The Western World-Middle Ages and Renaissance The barbarians who overran Europe in the Middle Ages wore long flowing ]ocks and beards. From the 9 th century, nobles on the Continent wore short hair (to the neck) and were clean shaven. After the Norman Conquest of the stilllong haired English, Continental fashion changed, requiring beards and long curled hair, filled out with false hair. In the 13 th and 14 th centuries the hair was neatly rolled at the neck in page boy style. The pudding-basin, ear-revealing style of the early 15th century was superseded~ longer page-boy style, rough in the north
meticulously curled and combed in Italy. The clergy were distinguished by the tonsure, a shaved patch on the head. Its precise shap disputed by the Celtic and Roman churches, in the 7 th century, whole crown was finally established, according to Roman usage.

The influence of the church, always concerned for modesty, encouraged married noblewomen to veil their long plaits entwined with ribbons and false hair. In the 13 th and 14 th centuries thev coiled their plaits over the ears or bundled them into gold or silver cauls (nets) or concealed hair, neck, and chin with a linen wimple, all these styles finished off by a veil or kerchief. In the 15 th century, fashionable ladies of northern Europe plucked their hairline to make their foreheads seem higher and scraped their hair back under an elaborate homed, pointed, or wired headdress. In the warmer climate of Italy, women displayed their hair in plaits and under low, jeweled turbans, bandeaus, or caps. Both men and women strove to achieve blond hair by either using a bleach or saffron or onion skin dye, or, in the case of Italian women, by sitting for hours in a crownless hat in the sun.

In the 16th century, after Francis I of France accidentally burned his hair with a torch, men wore short hair and grew short beards and moustaches. Women's hair was tucked under stiffened, lappeted hoods (caps in Italy), which gradually became smaller, revealing more hair as did small soft toques. The front hair was frizzed around the face and brushed over metal hoops or rolls. The back hair was coiled up in a net out of the way of the high collar. Blond or, in England, red hair, like Queen Elizabeth's, was popular, and false hair and wigs were used. Hair was dusted with powder or flour for blonds, violet for brunettes, and white for the gray-and held in place by gum or rotten oak paste. Lead combs were believed to presse and restore color to the hair. Jewels, feathers. and ornamental hairpins provided decoration.

 17th and 18th Centuries. In the first half of the 17 th century fashionable men wore lonc curled hair, often oiled, falling over wide, white collars. Frequently they displayed a longer lock tied with a bow, a neat moustache and a small, pointed beard, the Vandyke. Later in the 17 th century men shaved their faces and their beads, covering their heads with caps at home or long, full-bottomed, curled wigs in public.

Women's hair in the first part of the 17th cen tury was flat on top with fringe on the forehead; wide crimped puffs, then bunched long curls over wire frames at the sides; and a coil high in back decorated with rosettes or a fine linen or lace cap. Gradually the butline became high and narrow as the cap became the tall, lacy fontange.

In the 18th century, men continued to wear wigs but generally smaller and lighter ones, powdered white. Some wigs were tied back into a queue encased in a black silk bag, some were braided, and some were held by a black bow. The law, the army, and the navy each had its own style of wig. Some men wore their own hair n a queue.

In the early part of the 18th century, women had trim little crimped or curled heads, powdered and decorated with garlands or bows. Widows, middle-class women, and women at home wore tiny caps. By the 1770's coiffures built over horsehair pads or wire cages, stuck with pomatum, and powdered with starch mounted three feet in the air. Some had springs to adjust the height. They were extravagantly adorned with feathers, ribbons, jewels, and even ships, gardens, and menageries. Such constructions required several hours work every one to three weeks. Between sessions the undisturbed coiffure was likely to attract vermin. In the 1780's a reaction against formality and extravagance led to the hérisson(hedgehog) style for men and women, a loose, bushy mass of curls.

By this time hairdressers formed a distinct profession. The best were men, many of them trained as wigmakers. Especially notable was Legros de Rumigny, a former baker, who became court hairdresser in France, published the Art de la coiffure des dames (1765), and opened an Academie de Coiffure in 1769.

19th Century The French Revolution and Empire and the accompanying taste for simplicity and the antique had a great effect on hair styles. Both men and women cut their hair very short, like the Roman emperors, or women twisted their hair into Greek knots, with short curls framing the face, or later into smooth plaits around the head. They also wore colored wigs.

Gradually as men became more concerned with commerce, they spent less time on their hair. In the 19 th century they kept it relatively short, sometimes curled and dressed with macassar oil. Most men wore some variety of mous tache, sideburns, or beard.

By the 1830's women were dressing their hair standing rolls or loops on the crown, held by ribbons and combs, and short curls clustered at the temples. Beginning in the 1840's heads were sleek and demure, the hair oiled and smoothed down over the temples with long sausage curls at the side later with a heavy chignon of curls or Plaits in 'back. In the 1880's the front hair formed a crimped fringe. In the 1890's the pompadour of the Gibson Girl was combed over a pad making a high wide frame for the face, and swept up behind. Curls, crimping, and the natural-looking marcel wave were achieved by the use of heated irons, including the waving iron invented by the French hairdresser Marcel Grateau in the 1870's.

 20th Century As a result of World War I, women everywhere cut or "bobbed" their hair as a symbol of their political and social emancipa tion. There followed a succession of short, head- clinging hair styles inspired by film stars-the page boy of Garbo, the peek-a-boo of Veronica Lake. Short hair greatly increased the popularity of the permanent wave, invented by the German Charles Nessler about 1905. The early permanents required heat, took 12 hours, and sometimes gave a frizzy effect. Later the cold wave, with chemicals, simplified the process.

In the 1950's the invention of rollers for wav ing made possible the very short, layered Italian cut As young, active, informal women discarded hats, hair styIes, bouffant styles and the smooth, geometric cuts became more important. In the 1960's the availability of natural-looking hair pieces in the form of full wigs, half wigs, or long falls, at all prices, enabled almost every woman to own one or more to suit her taste and mood.

Men's hair in the 20th century was generally simple and short, even to the point of the brush- like crew cut, and most men were clean shaven. In the 1960's the nonconformist young started a trend toward longer hair and side burns or beards to suit their unconventional clothes. Some went to wild-looking extremes; others chose moderate, well-groomed styles to the nape of the neck, trimmed to flatter the shape of the head. Such styles were created or copied in the newly established men's hairdressing salons that offered scissor or razor cuts, lotions, drying in nets, hairspray, and coloring.

Professional Requirements In the 20th centurya hairdresser must fulfill professional requirements. In the United States he must attend a cosmetology school, generally for 1,000 hours of training, in order to receive a state license to practice. In Europe he must serve an apprentice ship of from one to five years before registering to practice.

SOURCE : http://www.queensnewyork.com