Hair Accessories in the Elizabethan Era

Elizabethan women loved to accessorise their hair, the bigger the better in that era and the more things you wore the more wealthier and high up you looked.

In our hair lesson we looked at some hair pieces that Elizabethan women wore back then.

CAUL:  A Caul is a loose net cap worn over the head, it normally has a lot of beading on it, mainly pearls as they were a favourite of the Elizabethan women.

Cauls were favoured by Elizabethan women and were worn at many different events and places, they were easy to use and kept the hair in tact.

(Costume: Rennaisance repro, 2013)

French Hood: This was an alice band type head piece. It kept the hair off of the face, it was a thick headband that went up and out at the back creating the "hood" like shape. You could have a veil at the back draping down or not and a lot of the time these were decorated with lots of jewels.

Attifet: The Attifet, similar to the French Hood is another Alice Band like headpiece but it has that famous heart shape to it, so that when women had the heart shape hair they could also wear a headpiece that followed it. The front dip in the headpiece would normally be a fold over the headpiece that created the heart shape. This too could come with a veil or not and was decorated again with lots of gorgeous jewels and beads and also lace.

• (Inspiration - renaissance, Tudor, medieval hats, 2014)

Pill Box Hat: This hat was worn by men and women in the Elizabethan era. The name of the hat explains the look of it, it was a small and round box like cap that would sit on the back of the head. It was normally decorated with gold or silver thread detailing and occasionally some beadwork and was worn normally with the hair up.

Cloth Bonnets: Cloth bonnets were a very popular headpiece worn by all women in Elizabethan time. It was worn by the poorer people on a daily basis to keep the hair out of the face, and normally was not detailed at all. It was also worn by maids and kitchen hands etc. The richer more wealthier people wore the bonnets a lot to keep the hair out of their face when they sleep, the more money you had the more detailed the bonnets would be.

Curling and Frizzing in Elizabethan Hairstyles Old and New

The Elizabethan era has become a big influence within fashion today inspiring many designers and makeup artists. In class we learnt to curl and crimp the hair, but we also learnt a figure of 8 way to crimp the hair for if you just have straighteners and not crimpers which was really effective.

Ive found that the modern designs of hair nowadays use less of the crimping frizzy technique and more of the backcombing technique to get the design they want. This hair is very messy, theres a lot of backcombing and curling done here to create the very un-shapened design.

With this hair shape you can tell they have backcombed the hair a lot to create the volume and height in the hair. They have kept the traditional heart shape that is in a lot of elizabethan based hairstyles nowadays. I think that this hair shape is the most recognised design within the elizabethan era.

This is a rather neat version of the elizabethan hair design with a little bit of a modern twist on the shape of the hair. They have kept the hair super smooth and I expect they used some padding to create this shape in the hair as it is very structured and not like the traditional more rounded heart shape that you see.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKmEo6H9XKc-QwIdNhAchq-nL6NQswgGys1Cdj-rkoIrRVCnV33dksBsvBvcgPKkoNRrXSUMc_AWbjoC24ooy3ARxId7IPfKzVLSciZ6enGdwi46I0edrFHEVAxG4rzvx4uHEdAVR_Rn8/s1600/history-skin-care-elizabethan.jpg

I really like this design in the hair, it is traditional yet very rustic. You can tell a lot of back combing has been done here to create the very messy shape to the hair and no doubt some padding was used to create the big size of the two halves of the heart shape here.

• (Beauty bag - handbag.com, 2015)

I find that the actual elizabethan hair styles were a lot more frizzier and more crimped. As they didn't have as much technology and ways to create the looks like we do nowadays they had the use the hair to the best of they advantage, using the hair as the base and the structure.

• (Comment by livius drusus, 2006)

Even with short hair they still managed to get the crimped look and created the heart shaped design in the hair.

• (Jensen and profile, 2011)

The Elizabethan hair was in my eyes a little less neat than our concept nowadays, but then they didn't have as many styling products to keep the hair maintained and tidy. It was almost always either curly or frizzy and most of the time in very tight crimps and curls to maintain a strong structure.

(Mongello, 2006)

Hair in Elizabethan Society

Hair played a big part in women's lives back in the Elizabethan society. The more detail in your hair, the more accessories you put in your hair, the richer and higher up you seemed. The poorer people would have the simpler buns with very little styling and maybe a small bonnet or hair net and then the richer people would add more plaits and curls and all the glamorous accessories like pearls.

Hair nets were the most popular things for ladies to wear in the Elizabethan period, also head bands were popular too just like this one on the left called an Attefet. The women loved to have big hair and to also shape in, into mainly the love heart shape you see here and the attefet was perfect for moulding with it and emphasising that shape.

The more glamorous the jewels the better, it was also another very important part of Elizabethan hair. Below right is Queen Elizabeth herself dressed in many jewels with her bright hair. Pearls on either side below her crown and a big gold chain head piece with what looks like a ruby dangling in the centre.

 Nowadays we are very influenced by elizabethan fashion, beauty and their looks and trends and of course we are a bit more equipped with straighteners, and crimpers etc to smarten up these looks so they have adapted in many different ways. The two pictures below are taken from the film Elizabeth, and i find that they are quite simple hair designs with not many accessories involved that what would of been used back then. When researching I found that victorian women went really big, the more the better.

The pearls signify purity and they were seen a lot on Queen Elizabeth.

The Start of Hair Design!

So today I had my first ever hair lesson at uni. Now I am a newcomer to all things hair, obviously I do my own hair but the most a do is a little top knot on the top of my head, so everything is new to me!

Today we learnt about buns and plaits and learnt three of each. Only the basics, but we learnt the proper ways to do these 6 looks. I was a bit apprehensive at first when getting my Kate head out of my kit bag, as I have never worked on anyone else before and I must say it is a completely different ball game working on someone else instead of yourself.

Personally I thought I took to it quite well, to my surprise! I also found it really easy to ask our tutor for any help needed as well, as I found the little things a bit trickier, like keeping the french plait tight to the head and how to secure the pins really tight in the hair so they wouldn't slip. But I kept practicing and I got there in the end!

We are learning these techniques as obviously they are just fundamental hair basics, but also the base to a lot of Elizabethan looks which is the theme of our first brief.

Now I don't know too much about Elizabethans or the Tudors, obviously a few things from what I learnt at school about Henry 8th and his 6 wives, and the basics, but nothing too in depth.

I know that people took a lot of pride in how they looked back then, the bigger the skirt, the more embellished the clothing and jewellery was, the more detailing added to the garments; made you look a lot more wealthier and you were respected and thought a lot higher of.

The same goes for the hair, big hair meant a lot. The hair I think was normally kept up back then and it almost looked very back combed and rolled over; into big bun like shapes on the head. The bigger the hair, once again the more money you had! Obviously back then there was no such thing as hair dye or even hair dressers as such, women mainly had long hair, all of natural colour. No straighteners or rollers/curlers. Like I said before, hair was normally kept up in different bun like designs, every when sleeping they would tie their hair, maybe plait it to keep it out of the way.

So I think I know the basics, but hopefully when we go more in depth in our studies and I get more research under my belt, I will know a lot more than when I started. But thats what this is for hey!