Out of the thousands of fashion plates held by the department, the ones from the 1870s and 1880s never fail to astonish with their depictions of lustrous and abundant hairstyles. We’ve often marveled at their complexity and more than once wondered, ‘how’d she get that hair?!’
Shedding some light on the mystery is the trade publication Revue de la coiffure, which was produced for hairdressers between the years 1865 and 1885. The text is in English, French and German and interspersed between the ads for tools of the trade and engraved plates of the latest styles are directions for how to achieve them. The two styles seen here described as “simple things” are sure to humble anyone on their best of hair days.
Directions for the style seen middle left read as follows:

Far from impossible, the sale of human hair for ‘falsies’ such as these was a booming industry. In her book, Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art, Aileen Ribiero notes that during the nineteenth century “Hair was big business, the trade monopolized by the French, with Paris ‘Hair Merchants’ who ‘harvested’ hair mainly from France, Germany and Spain, which was then treated and sold in the major capitals of Europe and New York.” At this time, 150,000 to 200,000 pounds of hair imported into the United States could fetch almost one million dollars!
These complicated hairstyles of the period were hence status symbols, requiring not only the paid talents of the hairdresser and the expense of the additional hair, but also the woman’s position as a lady of leisure with both time and money to spend.
An example of a ‘fringed frontpiece’ as recommended for the style in middle center is seen here above; figure no. 3 in the center image shows the false bangs now added.
Girls make lots of hair styles in recent days. In old days women used to make different and unique hair styles. I wanted to get information from many days about old days’ hair styles but couldn’t get proper information from any blog but I am very glad to get information about different old days’ hair styles from this blog post. I will try some of these very soon.