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.