Hair History: 17th century | Enlightenment

Hey guys, welcome to hair history of the 17th century. So the beginning of the 17th century is pretty much a continuation of the 16th century with all the wigs, hair pieces, wire frames, poofs, height, volume, everything like that. But after about 1615, that goes out of fashion. The height goes out of fashion and we see this kind of flatly pulled back hair with a top knot in the back of the head. And this is usually a pretty flat bun. Mine turned out a little bit larger than I was expecting. But this was pretty much the fashion throughout most of the 17th century. The hair was pulled back, made into some kind of flat bun or chignon. Now for the hair in the front, that was of secondary importance, but it was definitely not neglected. Women would curl the hair and the amount of hair that was curled varied throughout the age. You generally had a little bit of a fringe along the forehead. Mine is kind of very, very long, way too long. It would have been about this long, tiny little curls. And then you have your kind of over the ear flaps of curled hair. Generally the rule with this is the bigger the better. For some reason in the 17th century, the shape of the hair moved from vertical to horizontal. And that was the way in which women wanted their volume now. Just as poofy as possible sideways. So again, my hair would have been a little bit too long, because I can't achieve that type of volume with this length. So it would have been cut about a little bit shorter to about here, and then worn way to the side. And of course with your little bun in the back. In fact, the longer fringe as I'm wearing right now would have been worn by middle and lower class women. Now to achieve as much horizontal volume as possible, the use of false hair was encouraged. Not by men, not by the church, but definitely by women. Hairpieces were used, ready-made curls on pins that you would just stick into your hair. I quote, a great lady should not wear her own hair, for that's as mean as a goat of her own spinning. As we come closer to the 18th century, which is probably an age that most of you have a pretty vivid image for, we start to get that insane huge hair. Or at least we're gently sliding into that. You know, the huge powdered wigs, giant powdered wigs with all the accessories in them. Yeah, that's what we're going into. So it kind of started already at the end of the 17th century. Enter the tour. A tour is, well, it's the French word for tower, and this is pretty much what it was. It was a high tower, about, yeah, I could say it would be pretty much about this height. A tower of false curls. It was all, it was just a wig, or it would have been a wire frame or some type of padding with curls pinned all around it. Preferably those kind of rolls that you see that are typical for this age, and those curls would have been made with hot rollers or just curling irons that were heated up over a fire and pinned into place. And women would part their hair down the center, from about here, and then place the tulle on top of their heads. Kind of make it blend with their own hair, and just wear that giant thick wig of curls. So we're starting to see wigs and hairpieces in different shapes and sizes, and they all had their own names, and everything was fashionable in a certain country, in a certain decade of the end of the 17th century. And, I mean, you could write a whole dictionary just with words for hairpieces and wigs in the 17th century. Most of them were French, because France was kind of the center of fashion in this era. And by the end of the 17th century, we're also starting to see the whole powdering trend. So women powdered their hair, and it would get that weird kind of pastel-y color that would later transition into completely white. So let's jump into the hair tutorial. To start off, I am going to separate out this little tiny strip of hair in the front, near my forehead, to make my little face framing curls. And when I have that, I'm going to part my hair kind of diagonally towards the back of my head, and this section is going to be my top knot. So I'm going to just tie this off for now. I'm also going to apply some hair extensions into my voluminous side flaps. I don't know the correct word for them, I haven't learned my 17th century hair dictionary yet. But I'm just going to apply some extensions to get that huge volume. And now I'm going to add some hair extensions to this ponytail to make it big and voluminous. So I'm just adding a few strips of hair extensions, and when that's done, I'm going to comb it through to make them blend with my own hair. And I'm going to make a rope braid, which means I'm going to divide the hair into two sections. I'm going to twist both of the sections in one direction, and then twist them around each other in the opposite direction. And this is going to make sure that this braid stays as I make it right now, and doesn't unravel. So when I come to the end of my hair, I'm going to tie this off with a hair elastic, and I'm going to make this into a simple cinnamon bun. So wrap it around the base of my ponytail, and then pin it down with as many bobby pins as you need. Then I'm going to take a 19 millimeter curling iron, and I'm going to curl all of my hair, taking fairly small sections, so that the curls are nice and tight. And I'm going to do that to all of my hair, making the section smaller and smaller as I come near to my forehead. Because I want those curls to be really fine. Now while I'm waiting for these curls to cool down, I'm going to turn around again, and I'm going to adorn my bun with a string of pearls. So I'm just going to wrap those around my bun, and pin them down with bobby pins wherever I need them. And there's your 17th century hairstyle done! So I really hope you enjoyed this episode guys. Next week is the 18th century, I am terrified, but also very excited. So I hope to see you then, and thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to give a thumbs up, and I will see you next week in the next episode. Bye!