PDA

View Full Version : How Did They Do It?



Echileruwen
April 10th, 2016, 06:36 PM
I just saw some more pictures of long, gorgeous manes from the 1800's. They didn't have discount stores with huge amounts of conditioners and shampoos with and without silicons and other ingredients to choose from to pamper their hair types, and they most likely didn't have silk and satin pillowcases to use. But their hair was long and gorgeous, and I'd like to know just what it is they did use. Obviously they were doing something right. (Jealousy attack in progress.)

Sarahlabyrinth
April 10th, 2016, 06:41 PM
Benign neglect. Combing, gentle brushing, wearing it up and covered. Probably little to no trimming. Washing maybe once a month, and they wore sleeping caps. All good LHC-approved methods.

Echileruwen
April 10th, 2016, 06:46 PM
All but the once a month washings are do-able today. My boss would not be amused if I stopped washing my hair. OK, I need to experiment with gentler up-dos.

Sarahlabyrinth
April 10th, 2016, 06:52 PM
You have to show us the pictures you saw! I love old hair photos and the fashions are great too! ;)

There are some LHCers who only wash monthly - Madora springs to mind as one of them. So it can still be done at least in some cases.

meteor
April 10th, 2016, 06:59 PM
I'm probably oversimplifying the matter a bit, but I think they just didn't cut it that much, simple as that. :flower:
The standard of female beauty back in the day almost always included long hair, so drastic cuts were a lot less common as fashion choices compared to the 20th century and today.

As for manipulation and styling practices, hair was pretty heavily manipulated in some cultures and some social circles, according to fashion (e.g. with hot tongs, backcombing and other methods)... and there were some questionable practices like hair-singeing or using hair tonics with different ingredients, some of which were even toxic but weren't known as such back in the day... So I really don't think the long manes were the result of specific hair care (hair can grow long on a whole variety of different regimens), but rather the fashion for long hair for females and therefore avoiding unnecessary cutting.
However, they probably did avoid some hygral fatigue and added wet manipulation by not washing as frequently and using some SO/NW techniques, which probably helped keep hair's longevity.
And the popularity of updo hairstyles probably helped with added protection, as well. :)
Also, hair pieces were extremely popular in Victorian times, for example: from braided extensions to buns and parts of buns attached to hair, to "hair rats" for extra volume, etc... so not all hairstyles seen on pictures were made with only that person's hair, which is an important consideration when trying to recreate some of the most elaborate hair styles of those times. :flower:

Echileruwen
April 10th, 2016, 07:04 PM
You have to show us the pictures you saw! I love old hair photos and the fashions are great too! ;)

There are some LHCers who only wash monthly - Madora springs to mind as one of them. So it can still be done at least in some cases.

Here they are:

http://www.whizzpast.com/victorian-hairstyles-a-short-history-in-photos/

Those first pictures really show great heads of hair.

Anje
April 10th, 2016, 07:10 PM
Here they are:

http://www.whizzpast.com/victorian-hairstyles-a-short-history-in-photos/

Those first pictures really show great heads of hair.

Very cool. Braidwaves everywhere!

Sarahlabyrinth
April 10th, 2016, 07:10 PM
This is very interesting :

https://mimimatthews.com/2016/02/01/a-victorian-ladys-guide-to-hair-care-2/

Echileruwen
April 10th, 2016, 07:18 PM
That is interesting. I might just try the eggs.

spidermom
April 10th, 2016, 07:28 PM
I wonder if I would find the hair as pretty if it were in sharp focus. Just about anything looks good in soft focus.

Zesty
April 10th, 2016, 07:39 PM
That is interesting. I might just try the eggs.

For a while I consistently washed my hair with a mixture of egg yolks (no whites), olive oil, and water. It worked well but I eventually gave it up because it was an inconvenience to make it every time I washed. I did get pretty good at separating yolks from whites though, because if I didn't I'd get white bits in my hair. :p

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: I find vintage hair care tips to be quite interesting. Especially the fact that they washed so infrequently compared to people nowadays. I'm sure they didn't all have lovely hair though. As the article said, those pictures were probably models. I would be really interested to have someone with modern eyes get a good look at the average head of hair back then.

Beborani
April 10th, 2016, 07:39 PM
There are several cultures in India where daily washing or at least wetting was common as they bathed in rivers. Twice/thrice a week washings were expected in the culture I grew up in. They all had lovely long hair. Not washing is probably a European tradition as their climate was cold.

Zesty
April 10th, 2016, 07:41 PM
There are several cultures in India where daily washing or at least wetting was common as they bathed in rivers. Twice/thrice a week washings were expected in the culture I grew up in. They all had lovely long hair. Not washing is probably a European tradition as their climate was cold.

That's a good point. I wonder if Europeans' scalps suffered in comparison or if the preening was enough.

Sarahlabyrinth
April 10th, 2016, 07:42 PM
For a while I consistently washed my hair with a mixture of egg yolks (no whites), olive oil, and water. It worked well but I eventually gave it up because it was an inconvenience to make it every time I washed. I did get pretty good at separating yolks from whites though, because if I didn't I'd get white bits in my hair. :p

Anyway, back to the subject at hand: I find vintage hair care tips to be quite interesting. Especially the fact that they washed so infrequently compared to people nowadays. I'm sure they didn't all have lovely hair though. As the article said, those pictures were probably models. I would be really interested to have someone with modern eyes get a good look at the average head of hair back then.

I tried the egg thing as well for a while and while it does work well, it was kind of inconvenient compared to using shampoo, and you have to be careful to have barely warm water so the egg doesn't cook in your hair.

Zesty
April 10th, 2016, 07:49 PM
I tried the egg thing as well for a while and while it does work well, it was kind of inconvenient compared to using shampoo, and you have to be careful to have barely warm water so the egg doesn't cook in your hair.

Yeah you can't make it up ahead of time either (I tried). I ended up not having to worry about the water temperature, because I basically became a wizard at separating the yolks out. But it wasn't better enough for me to continue indefinitely.

pailin
April 11th, 2016, 02:45 AM
I'll second Meteor's comment about not cutting. They weren't going to salons for haircuts and getting too much taken off, a couple times a year.

lapushka
April 11th, 2016, 05:37 AM
Benign neglect. Combing, gentle brushing, wearing it up and covered. Probably little to no trimming. Washing maybe once a month, and they wore sleeping caps. All good LHC-approved methods.

That's all good & well if you don't have oily hair. There must have been women with oily hair as well, so washing needed to happen faster. So the question remains.

maskedrose
April 11th, 2016, 08:38 AM
Seconding that most of these photos are showcasing women with particularly gorgeous hair, and I don't think they are representative of the general population. There were as many women with thin or fine hair then as there are now. They were just more likely to have their hair up (and padded with rats/hairpieces) when photographed.

Hairkay
April 11th, 2016, 10:55 AM
There are several cultures in India where daily washing or at least wetting was common as they bathed in rivers. Twice/thrice a week washings were expected in the culture I grew up in. They all had lovely long hair. Not washing is probably a European tradition as their climate was cold.

We have that habit in the Caribbean too.

LadyCelestina
April 11th, 2016, 01:23 PM
Yeah, these women in the pictures have naturally very thick and outstandingly beautiful hair - otherwise they wouldn't wear it down for pictures (in the time where taking a picture was a lot more work than now). The norm was an updo, too, so the photos definitely intended to show off beautiful hair.

LadyCelestina
April 11th, 2016, 01:42 PM
That's all good & well if you don't have oily hair. There must have been women with oily hair as well, so washing needed to happen faster. So the question remains.

Yes, but the sebum look wasn't considered to be as bad as it is now, plus the hair was worn up in an updo all the time. I have recently looked at a 19th century photo of a political party meet-up at a local town square. The girls had their hair parted in the middle and slicked back into a bun/braid. I think they looked at how neatly the hair is combed/styled more than how clean it is (as often commented on in older novels here - when a woman looks unkept her hair is messy or "uncombed", not "unwashed" or "greasy".)
I doubt they washed their hair even once a month in the winter...especially the poorer people.

henné
April 11th, 2016, 01:56 PM
Well, considering we have both 'Water Only' and 'No Wash/Sebum Only' active threads on this forum, these haircare regimens do appear to be working. At least for some.

I have been WO for 2.5 months now and it's working just fine for me. Although, I do wash much more often than the Victorians - about once a week at the moment - and I definitely don't have dirty or greasy hair and it sure doesn't smell badly either. I massage my scalp, scritch, preen, detangle and brush with BBB brushes every day. It works fine, for me.

It's kind of fun finding out that one actually doesn't need shampoo - after believing for 30 odd years that shampoo is a necessity.

lapushka
April 11th, 2016, 02:15 PM
My scalp went nuts with SO. 14 days for periods on end between washes and I had a massive SD flare-up to thank me for it at the very end. Back then it was kind of a medical necessity. I was still on the path to discovering I had Menière's. Due to it (dizziness, falling, turning, tinnitus, odd sensation in ear, throwing up) popping up whenever my hair was washed, they first thought it was positional, but it didn't turn out to be in the end. I avoided washing my hair as much as possible at the time because for a while I wasn't on medication for it. Thanks to the right medications in the end, we could go back to washing as scheduled (suddenly weekly washing was possible). Whether it was due to the long stretchings, I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with it.

Back then SD had to exist as well, no?

LadyCelestina
April 11th, 2016, 02:31 PM
My scalp went nuts with SO. 14 days for periods on end between washes and I had a massive SD flare-up to thank me for it at the very end. Back then it was kind of a medical necessity. I was still on the path to discovering I had Menière's. Due to it (dizziness, falling, turning, tinnitus, odd sensation in ear, throwing up) popping up whenever my hair was washed, they first thought it was positional, but it didn't turn out to be in the end. I avoided washing my hair as much as possible at the time because for a while I wasn't on medication for it. Thanks to the right medications in the end, we could go back to washing as scheduled (suddenly weekly washing was possible). Whether it was due to the long stretchings, I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with it.

Back then SD had to exist as well, no?

Of course people had scalp issues,as well as lice for example , but by the treatments suggested back then I guess they'd much rather slap on a 'tonic' and hope for the best, not wash more. It was perhaps too inconvenient to wash often for them.You have to bring water, heat water, pour into tub, get in, freeze your ass off, then air dry. I personally wouldn't go through that in winter unless I absolutely had to :D
ETA: and also, you likely have kids to wash first :D and laundry to do. ETA 2: Of course there were women who bathed and washed their hair quite often,even daily, but they likely had the time and the money to do so.

meteor
April 11th, 2016, 04:30 PM
Yeah, these women in the pictures have naturally very thick and outstandingly beautiful hair - otherwise they wouldn't wear it down for pictures (in the time where taking a picture was a lot more work than now). The norm was an updo, too, so the photos definitely intended to show off beautiful hair.

Absolutely! And wearing such long hair down was probably seen as an intimate thing, not to be worn down in public, so pictures like this would be done specifically to showcase extremely rare hair. And we do have reports of people being well-known specifically for that hair, and reports, correspondence, articles, ads (http://cf.collectorsweekly.com/uploads/2013/09/SutherlandSistersAd-1.jpg), and even sales of hair care products (e.g. this one (http://www.sideshowworld.com/111-Mis/7-Sisters/Hair.h13.jpg) or this one (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/467554277_b5bafbcf3a_o.jpg)) show that people in the 19th century were just as amazed at that incredibly stunning hair as we are today :D (e.g. The Seven Sutherland Sisters, Mlle Aline Vallandi, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, etc...)

I think if aliens googled "super long and thick hair 2016" (please forgive the silliness of the thought experiment! :oops:), they might end up concluding that the norm for most people in 2016 is to have extremely long and super-luscious hair, too. ;)

Notice how only females are seen in those photos with hair trailing on the floor? So I really think the long hair was fashion-driven: it's not that females did something amazing to hair, while males didn't. Males simply followed a very different fashion - the one for cutting hair short, while females didn't.

That said, avoiding damaging practices and avoiding unnecessary cuts can really help grow to one's genetic potential! :D


Of course people had scalp issues,as well as lice for example , but by the treatments suggested back then I guess they'd much rather slap on a 'tonic' and hope for the best, not wash more. It was perhaps too inconvenient to wash often for them.You have to bring water, heat water, pour into tub, get in, freeze your ass off, then air dry. I personally wouldn't go through that in winter unless I absolutely had to :D
ETA: and also, you likely have kids to wash first :D and laundry to do. ETA 2: Of course there were women who bathed and washed their hair quite often,even daily, but they likely had the time and the money to do so.

I agree: hair tonics and treatments for "dander" were extremely popular. And it's easy to find lots of ads from the 19th century for that. :D
And you are right, a special "order" (kids first) of bath-taking was promoted, even in advertisements (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/Pears%27Soap02.jpg), due to water logistics and obvious limitations.

There was a bit of a sanitation revolution in the late 19th - early 20th c. in N.America and Europe, as we started to understand a bit more about bacteria, and, importantly, running water at home became increasingly available (at least in the more affluent households).


Overall, shampoo is a pretty recent invention, but we used soaps and cleansing herbs/pastes (soapnuts, soapwort, yucca,...) and other cleansers for centuries, no problem! :thumbsup:

By the way, apparently, the word "shampoo" is from Hindi "champo" - from "champna" (to press, knead)... like Indian "champi" scalp massage that's still extremely popular pre-wash. ;) The service was originally introduced to Britain by a Bengali entrepreneur Sake Dean Mahomed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sake_Dean_Mahomed) in 1814, when he opened a shampooing bath known as "Mahomed’s Indian Vapour Baths" (kind of like Turkish baths) in Brighton, where clients received a champi massage. (He was even appointed "Shampooing Surgeon" to George IV and William IV.)
By the late 19th c., the meaning of the word started shifting from scalp massage to washing hair (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/shampoo), even though it was still done with soap until later in the 1930's, when modern, non-soap shampoos were introduced. :)

LongCurlyTress
April 11th, 2016, 04:46 PM
This is very interesting :

https://mimimatthews.com/2016/02/01/a-victorian-ladys-guide-to-hair-care-2/

This is so interesting! Thank you for posting! :o

winship2
April 12th, 2016, 06:11 PM
Maskedrose, sorry to hijack the thread for a second, but is there a name for that lovely hairstyle in your avatar? I'd love to try it! Thanks :blossom:

Entangled
April 12th, 2016, 06:17 PM
It looks like a diagonal Dutch braid into a side bun.

mariazelie
April 23rd, 2016, 07:36 AM
Well, considering we have both 'Water Only' and 'No Wash/Sebum Only' active threads on this forum, these haircare regimens do appear to be working. At least for some.

I have been WO for 2.5 months now and it's working just fine for me. Although, I do wash much more often than the Victorians - about once a week at the moment - and I definitely don't have dirty or greasy hair and it sure doesn't smell badly either. I massage my scalp, scritch, preen, detangle and brush with BBB brushes every day. It works fine, for me.

It's kind of fun finding out that one actually doesn't need shampoo - after believing for 30 odd years that shampoo is a necessity.
henne', I agree completely with you, I have been doing the WO for several weeks now.