Making my 1762 hairstyle

I was so happy with my hair for the 1762 ball, it's definitely the best 18th century hairstyle I've ever managed to make.

In order to get the result I'm mainly indebted to two sources - Madame Isis' Toilette and the book 18th century hair and wig styling by Kernda Van Cleave. I used Isis' instructions for the products that were used in the time, and Kendra's instructions for actually styling the hair.

The big difference for my hair styling result was that this was the first time I actually worked with hair powder, previously I have skipped it or used dry shampoo. When I tried to make a test run of the hairstyle a couple of weeks ago I realized that it wouldn't work. My hair is really red with bright pink sparks, and it definitely would both clash with my bright orange dress and definitely looked too modern. I would need to dampen the colour of the hair in some way. Well hair powder it was. Thankfully Isis has some recipes for hair powder and there was enough time to order ingredients from Swedish shops. There are shops out there selling all the finished products, but they are mostly based in the US so that wasn't an option for me.

In the end my hair powder was more of a "take what you have in your pantry" than an exact powder according to original recipes. I used a mix of corn and potato starch (I ran out of starch) and powdered chalk. I also added some ground cloves and cinnamon to give the hair powder some fragrance.

In order to get the hair powder to stick to the hair you need to have some products. In historical times they used pomade, and I had tried to make my own pomade a couple of years ago. That pomade wasn't a success though, but I found an off hand comment that you could use modern cold cream instead of pomade. Cold cream is also mainly made from beeswax and fat after all.

Then it was time to actually start the styling. The day before the ball I curled my hair. I used pincurls for the front part and bigger foam rollers for the back. I wetset them and had them in all the time until I got to the hotel.

I started with taking out the pin curls and got this messy hair. I then took a small strand of hair, put on the cold cream and brushed generous amounts of hair powder on it, with the biggest powder brush that I had. It is messy and the powder will get on you and around you. I'm just wearing my shift here. I was glad that I had added the cloves and cinnamon to the hair powder since I didn't like the smell of the cold cream and they helped mask it.

Here is my hair with cold cream and powder. I still have the foam rollers in for the back of the hair. I then followed Kendra's instructions to create the "tete de mouton" style, with tight sausages in the front. One thing that I want to emphasize is that you need a really tiny roll form to roll the "sausages". I have long and fluffy hair, and the first time I tried it they got too big. This time I used a chop stick, that's how small it needs to be.

The front of the hair was finished and it was time to start with the back.

This messy photo is to show the difference between the shiny and brighter hair straight out of the foam roll, compared to the powdered hair that is matte and a toned down in colour.

Here the back hair is powdered as well. Now what the hair powder does is that it builds volume, a lot of volume. I have a lot of hair, but it's very fine. As soon as I put it in a bun or a braid it shrinks and I get very small and sad hairstyles. When I did my test run of the hairstyle I made one braid in the back that I started a the nape and then pinned to the top of my head. Now with the powder applied I could make two fairly thick braids instead.

The final step was to add some flowers in the hair, not the least to mask the tip of the braids. I used two small hair ornaments and a small flower crown. The flower cown was attached to an elastic, that I cut off so that I only got the flowers and then I pinned them on to the hair. For the make up I used a gloss highlighter to give shiny and paler look, some of my regular rouge and a very red lip gloss. It would have been better with a more red rouge, bu this was what I had at thome.

The hair from the back

The hairstyle held extraordinary well. In fact I slept on it and it still looked good when I woke up. I was worried on how I was going to get the cold cream and powder out of the hair, but there was no reason to fear. It was actually more simple to get it all out, compared to when I've used strong modern hair products. I washed my hair with regular shampoo and conditioner and it was no problems at all to get all the products and tangles out of the hair. In fact my hair feels silky and smooth like if I had paid for a very expensive treatment of it. The last time I was at my hairdresser I did that, but this gave they very same effect. Cold cream and hairpowder for the win.

If I'm ever going to do a big historical hairstyle again I'm definitely going to use pomade and hair powder. It was a bit messy and it took some time, so I don't think I'm going to do it for more casual historical events though.