How Would You Construct This Roman Hairstyle?

[eternallyverdan]

I gave this one a try today, because I've had my hair in rag curls and down, with a fairly stiff breeze. I figure that's about as closing to teasing as I'm ever going to get.

What I did was made 5 or 6 very loose, messy cinnamon buns with the ends sticking out, and then kept adding Amish pins until everything stayed still. I made my crosspieces too thin so that they're pretty much invisible, and my scarf is too wide, but I think that this turned out quite nicely, and that it could look much closer to the original with some refinement:

[vindo]

The first thought that came to my mind was "first, grow your hair out for 15-20 years..."

The sheer silk scarf looks nice with it too, not too flashy yet delicate and feminine. I wonder if there is some kind of hair rat under all of that to add bulk, because that was a huge mass of hair.

I'm pretty sure there is, the hair seems to be draped over something like in my re-construction where the hair falls over the clip.

[StephanieB]

False hair, rats, extensions - all were historically authentic from at least 1000 C.E. - and quite possibly a lot earlier, but I know to that date, at least. It's highly doubtful that such 'embellishments' were brand-new ideas in various parts of the world circa 1000 C.E.

However - we don't have much in the way of close-up examples of actual extant women's hairstyles from that far back... as Merlin said, we only have carvings and statuary and artwork - all highly suspect to be akin to our Photoshopping today.

What textual descriptions we have are almost exclusively from men, almost all of whom most assuredly had no idea how hairstyles were constructed. (just as is true today)

In such cases, most reproductions and/or reenactor-types go with whatever ends up looking like what artwork or text descriptions are extant, and what seems plausible to us nowadays. BUT every decade or two, what seems plausible to us at the time becomes ridiculously obsolete as we learn more and more. We once thought that medieval perople didn't bathe or wash their hair much - we know better today. We once believed that medieval people spiced their meat so higly because it was rotten and they were attempting to make it more palatable - but we know now that that just isn't true at all. The now-silly list goes on and on and on... and hairstyles are no different than any other aspect of our forbears' lives.


Alo, as an extra point - when one talks about 'ancient Roman women's hairstyles' - one must clarify what class of women one is referring to: That makes a world of difference! Rich women from powerful families might have had their hair dresssed by their slaves daily, but certainly women who did manual labor did not do more than the most basic braids, buns, and the most basic of headgear to confine their hair. Sloppily piled up hair like the buns seen in this thread were much likelier to be working women's (not that kind of ww - lol) hair that was partially falling down (out of it's confines) than that of a woman who did no manual labor - especially in the climate of Rome.

[birthmarkie]

I will definitely try this, or Emi's renaissance bun. I like the boost in volume and tendrils!