Reading the Regency

Hair Styles and Head Dressing - part 1

"My sweetest Catherine, how have you been this long age? But I need not ask you, for you look delightfully. You really have done your hair in a more heavenly style than ever; you mischievous creature, do you want to attract everybody?"
[Chapter 10, Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen]

Hairstyles and head dressing changed considerably during the extended Regency period. In 1790, wigs were still fashionable, but before the turn of the century the natural look became more favoured and people began to wear what they called their "real" hair. By 1820, obvious wigs were rarely seen, and when they were worn most were natural looking to hide hair loss, add extra volume or length, or cover grey hair to offer a more youthful appearance.

Head dressing was very important, and not limited to wearing hats. Plain hair that had been styled with a decorated comb, band or feather was considered as dressed as if they were wearing a bonnet or a turban. Full wigs that had been styled to look like natural hair were also described as a headdress.

Fashions in hairstyles could come and go within a season. In the first half of the Regency period, styles were first reported from France before being copied in England, as this detailed example from the Lady's Magazine:

"PARISIAN FASHIONS
The hair of our fashionable ladies is still dressed very forward: the bandeau of pearls, with a cameo à l'antique in the middle, comes down almost to the eye-brows. The hair is turned back behind the ear; the comb is placed low, and always a little on one side; and the side locks sometimes hang down almost on the shoulder. Some ladies were in the habit of wearing the turban very backwards; at present the coiffeur fastens the veil extremely low, though above the comb, and thrown back on a headdress of hair."
[The Lady's Magazine, pub. May 1804]

Later in the period, a description of the current fashions suggested that what was considered fashionable in hair could even change from month to month:

"The hair in full dress does not display the forehead quite so much as last month, but it falls lower on each side of the face; part of the hind hair is braided, and the remainder is disposed in bows, which are brought very far back."
[General Observations on Fashion & Dress, Ackermann's Repository of Arts, pub. March 1817]

The use of French to describe hairstyles was most commonly seen in English fashion plates between 1799 and 1809. After that, French terms would occasionally be mentioned until 1814, when they began to describe hairstyles in English only.

Ladies' Hairstyles

"Miss Fairfax has done her hair in so odd a way--so very odd a way--that I cannot keep my eyes from her. I never saw any thing so outree!--Those curls!--This must be a fancy of her own. I see nobody else looking like her!-- I must go and ask her whether it is an Irish fashion. Shall I?"
[Chapter 26, Emma by Jane Austen]

At the beginning of the 19th century, the classical world inspired fashion in general, and hair in particular. Hairstyles were copied from Greek and Roman artefacts brought back to the country by gentlemen who had been travelling around the Mediterranean. This was illustrated in a story printed in an American Magazine of the time:

"The most fashionable hair dresser of Paris, in order to accommodate himself to the classical taste of his fair customers, is provided with a variety of antique busts as models; and when he waits on a lady, enquires if she chuses to be drest that day à la Cleopatre, la Diana, or la Psyche? Sometimes the changeful nymph is a vestal, sometimes a Venus; but the last rage has been the Niobé, of late fat and lean, gay and grave, old and young, have been all à la Niobé; and the many curled periwig, thrown aside by the fashionable class, now decorates the heads of pretty shop keepers."
[The New England Quarterly Magazine, vol 1, pub 1802]