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ravenreed
January 31st, 2011, 02:06 AM
Have these been posted yet somewhere? Lapuska posted a fascinating link in another thread on hair singeing. Rather than completely derail that thread, I thought I would post these from the same Youtube channel. There are several for those interested. The person posting these videos says she's a hairdressing archaeologist. Very cool! I am glad I don't have to sew my hair every day.


Julia Domna 1. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4P2ZO6YEKs)

Agrippina the Younger (should look familiar, LHC-ers!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfMp9Tlvxwk)

naereid
January 31st, 2011, 03:23 AM
My BF is an archeologist. I once asked him about Roman hairstyles and he said sculptures are most likely not entirely accurate. They were made by men who had no idea about hairdressing, not to mention how hard it is to replicate hair texture in stone anyway. :p But these videos do a pretty good job guessing what it might have looked like in real life!

jasper
January 31st, 2011, 03:50 AM
Julia Domina would have welcomed the invention of hair pins, I guess. Would have been easier than sewing your braided bun in place and having to unsew to take it down.

I also felt kind of miserable watching all that sewing when the hair sticks (bodkins) could have secured that bun in no time.

Purdy Bear
January 31st, 2011, 05:00 AM
I can remember some of the hairstyles back then, they might be Phanicians though, werent they a lot of small braids pulled back into buns. I guess with the typical heat you needed something to keep your cool.

may1em
January 31st, 2011, 07:41 AM
I like this channel. Hopefully, the sewn styles lasted longer than anything else they could have done - if this had to be done every day, at least it kept the hairdresser busy.

Alaia
January 31st, 2011, 08:00 AM
That is very interesting. I too wonder why they didn't seem to think of using the bodkins to hold up the whole design. Maybe it wasn't stable enough for them and the sewing would be easy I suppose if one had a household of slaves to do it.

Madora
January 31st, 2011, 09:07 AM
Thanks, Ravenweed, for those very interesting links! I never knew there was such a designation as a hair archeologist! I wish she could interpret the amazing braids of Empress Elizabeth of Austria!

Qamar
January 31st, 2011, 10:59 AM
I may have to try Agrippina's style, but with hair ties and u pins instead of needle and thread.

Belisarius
January 31st, 2011, 11:04 AM
I like this channel. Hopefully, the sewn styles lasted longer than anything else they could have done - if this had to be done every day, at least it kept the hairdresser busy.
Women from that level of society would most likely have had several slaves for themselves. So that really would not have been a problem.

Angela_Rose
January 31st, 2011, 11:36 AM
I love the Agrippina the Younger style.

Here's my take on it (http://forums.longhaircommunity.com/album.php?albumid=735&pictureid=42147), long before I saw this video.

ddiana1979
January 31st, 2011, 11:54 AM
I don't know how accurate the hairstyles are, but I'm finding the women's styles on Spartacus: Blood & Sand to be simply exquisite. The first season is streaming on Netflix now. A lot of it is quite obviously wigs &/or extensions, but the styles are still gorgeous.

ravenreed
January 31st, 2011, 12:11 PM
I also find the hairstyles on Spartacus fascinating but I am not convinced of their historical accuracy in any way.

Lemur_Catta
January 31st, 2011, 01:53 PM
I love these hairstyles, and although sewing the hair seems difficult it doesn't seem to take a lot of time...maybe it would be a nice alternative to pins, we could do something like this with ribbon. I think it would pull less than a hairstick bun, or even a bun with pins.

Madame J
January 31st, 2011, 02:00 PM
I just finished up watching the HBO series Rome and the hairstyles there are really cool. The aristocratic ladies have intricate braids and things, but I really like the simple, mostly-half-up styles with scarves that the women in Vorenus' household wear. Does anyone know if there are any tutorials to recreate the hairstyles from that show?

Yamainu
January 31st, 2011, 09:52 PM
I love the phrases she uses:

"We're going to weave a three strand inside augmented braid..."

... I much prefer LHC terminology as "a French Braid" is much less of a mouthful. :D

podo
February 1st, 2011, 06:51 PM
Does anyone know how often these women changed their style - or even just took down the style it was currently it?

I know cornrows or braided dreads are long-term; you wash your hair with it still in that style (or you can anyway) so I wonder if these styles could have been similar? Or if they only took them down to wash their hair, and that was once a week/once a month? hmmm

Masara
February 2nd, 2011, 07:35 AM
Thanks for posting these. I was looking for Roman hairstyles just last week since I was taking a couple of classes to visit a few Roman monuments. I'll be needing something for our "gladiator day" later in the year too.

I can't see me sewing my hair in place, but I'm sure I can adapt these to get the same sort of result.
On the other hand, I looked at her "aphrodite knot" and I don't think I'll be trying that one soon.

Alvrodul
February 2nd, 2011, 07:52 AM
I love these videos! And I consider them both useful and educational. And knowing about the Roman method of securing hairdos is something I will keep in mind. I haven't actually tried it out - at least not yet ;) - but it would be interesting to see how compares to using hairpins.
I also wonder how sewing the ends of braids would compare to using elastics - which method would be more likely to damage hair?

CarpeDM
February 2nd, 2011, 08:50 AM
Have these been posted yet somewhere? Lapuska posted a fascinating link in another thread on hair singeing. Rather than completely derail that thread, I thought I would post these from the same Youtube channel. There are several for those interested. The person posting these videos says she's a hairdressing archaeologist. Very cool! I am glad I don't have to sew my hair every day.


Julia Domna 1. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4P2ZO6YEKs)

Agrippina the Younger (should look familiar, LHC-ers!) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfMp9Tlvxwk)

Thanks for attaching the Julia Domna 1 video! I don't think I would have liked to be a hair slave back then, so much hair sewing, but how fascinating!

spoonshine
February 2nd, 2011, 10:44 AM
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing these.

In one of the videos she said that it wasn't possible to do the style on oneself and that poorer women without hair slaves would have had to style each other's hair. That leads me to assume that mirrors weren't available to them because surely these styles are possible to do on oneself with a couple of mirrors. I can imagine winging it without the mirrors as well. Am I mad?

I've tried hair taping which is very comfortable and I'm very curious to try a sewn bun to sew how comfy it is compared to pins.

Rapunzelwannabe
February 2nd, 2011, 09:14 PM
I don't know how accurate the hairstyles are, but I'm finding the women's styles on Spartacus: Blood & Sand to be simply exquisite.

Ditto!! My BF likes it for the blood and guts, but I'm obsessed with the hair and clothes!

Nae
February 2nd, 2011, 09:36 PM
Wow, that is a lot of thread in those hairdos. I would have never guessed. I bet they hold really well.

IcarusBride
February 2nd, 2011, 10:27 PM
Just saying... If I had to be a slave, I would really prefer to be a hairdressing slave!

MaggieJoh
February 2nd, 2011, 10:28 PM
I absolutely adored these videos especially the second. When I was explaining it to my Mum (who a long time ago had long hair) she told me "Oh that style? I used to do that!" Well I am assuming she didn't mean in 5 C.E or she looks great for her age lol. Anyways I am planning on trying it out myself ASAP and hope to have pictures up on Facebook. Thanks for the share!!

Panth
February 3rd, 2011, 04:14 AM
Very interesting. Thanks for sharing these.

In one of the videos she said that it wasn't possible to do the style on oneself and that poorer women without hair slaves would have had to style each other's hair. That leads me to assume that mirrors weren't available to them because surely these styles are possible to do on oneself with a couple of mirrors. I can imagine winging it without the mirrors as well. Am I mad?

I've tried hair taping which is very comfortable and I'm very curious to try a sewn bun to sew how comfy it is compared to pins.

I'm pretty sure they did have mirrors, but they were made of circles of polished brass or copper and thus didn't have anywhere near the reflective properties of the mirrors that we have today.

I suspect for poorer women the issue would not be whether mirrors were available but that they could not afford them. Sheets of metal to produce mirrors of the size that we use today would be very expensive.

The medieval era is more my area of knowledge; then, certainly, mirrors were not an affordable item.

ktani
February 3rd, 2011, 06:25 AM
Here is another link for you, http://www.hairselect.com/roman.htm.

I have a number of them saved from a now defunct thread. They did use hair pins.

Madame J
February 3rd, 2011, 08:13 AM
Just saying... If I had to be a slave, I would really prefer to be a hairdressing slave!

Apparently they were quite in-demand and could go for a very high price. Although, I really wouldn't want to be the closest one to the domina when I pulled her hair while dressing it!