Historical Hair: Recreating Authentic Hairstyles from Ancient Greece

Welcome to another historical hair video. In today's tutorial, we're going to be talking about the ancient Greeks. Now if you're watching this video, chances are that you're interested in historical hairstyling, which means you've probably seen some historical Greek styles before. If you haven't, I'll link above to some that are really good examples of like basic Greek styles that other people have covered before on YouTube. So I'm not gonna rehash things that I've seen before. Instead with this video, I'm gonna help you widen and deepen your knowledge about Greek historical hairstyling. So we'll go over some hairstyles from classical Greek that you may not have seen before, some more interesting and unique styles, and then we will touch on some styles from other ancient Greek periods that are not the classical Greeks, since other Greeks through time have been styling their hair as well. So that's enough of me talking. Let's get started. Let's first look at the OG Greeks. Not the Sparta of Leonidas or the Athens of Plato, but the Bronze Age Minoan civilization that developed on Crete and the surrounding Aegean Islands between 2700 and 1400 BCE. These people were the first major trading culture of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and are responsible for Europe's first written language, Greek mythology, and the stories of the Minotaur and Atlantis. Around 1400 BCE, they were conquered by the Mycenaeans from mainland Greece. But the spread of Minoan culture from a millennia of trade meant that the Mycenaeans shared a lot of similarities with the Minoans. In terms of hairstyles, we learn a lot about these cultures from the palace frescoes they left behind. Female Minoan styles denoted age, with young girls wearing shaved heads except a ponytail and a front fringe, and mature women were wearing long wavy hair loosely bound at the back of the head with string and cloth. For the Mycenaeans, they adopted a lot of the same stylistic features, but instead used female styles to denote social status as well as religious ceremony. Women would wear a strip of cloth or crown around the head, sometimes with curly bangs over the forehead or a tendril of hair hanging in front of the ear. Long hair would either be partially tied into a high bun, bound into long ponytails, or left free hanging under a large headdress. The more wealthy a woman was, the more these hair decorations were adorned with beads and jewelry. In the first hairstyle of this tutorial, we'll replicate a sort of middle-class hairstyle from the Mycenaeans. A quick note on the styles in this video, fluffy, curly hair was typical of the peoples of ancient Greece, so most styles work best with this hair type. To prepare, I've curled my hair using curlers and setting lotion. To start the style, brush all your hair backwards except for a small tendril in front of each ear. Place a crown, tiara, or decorative ribbon around your head so that it holds all your hair in this brushed back position. Then split the hair behind your head into two or three chunks. With thicker hair, you'll probably want more of these, so three or even four. Around one of the chunks of hair, use a strip of rough cloth or ribbon to tie the hair into a ponytail. Knot the cloth a couple times, then tuck the ends into the wrapping to hide them. Get another strip of cloth and tie it around the same ponytail of hair just a few inches down the length. Again, tie a couple knots and tuck in the ends to hide them. With your remaining one or two ponytails, repeat this process of tying it twice with strips of cloth. A pro tip is to use a rough fabric material, as this helps the knots hold in place better, as well as keeps the fabric from slipping off your hair if your hair is naturally pretty smooth. It's also more historically accurate. Here is what your Mycenaean hairstyle looks like once it's completed. Next up, we'll move into the era of Greek history that many more people know about, the Classical Era. Greek culture and influence waned in a dark ages period after the fall of the Mycenaean Empire around 1100 BCE, but starting in 800 BCE, Greece went through massive civil changes to create the height of the Classical Era in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE. This was the era of democracy, philosophy, theater, and literature. It also features a lot of anthropomorphic art, from which we can learn a lot about how Greek women dressed and wore their hair. Paintings on pottery often depicted domestic scenes for which the pottery would be used, and funerary portraits adorned wealthy people's tombs. From these, we can see that married women often wore their hair tied up in some way, either as a low bun, high ponytail, or covered with a headscarf. This was achieved by stitching the hair into place with needle and thread, or tying it with ribbon-like hair wrappings. Fancy women might also wear diadems as adornments, circular crown-like jewelry that helped hold the hair in place while showing off their wealth. For this style, we'll replicate the high bun look with a beaded hair ornament. Because hair could only be held in place with string or cloth, this was a pretty simple style to achieve. First, gather all your hair at the lower back of your head. Then, begin twisting it up towards the ceiling, like you would in a modern French twist. If you have particularly long hair, you can fold it back over the twist. Otherwise, leave the ends of your hair hanging free. From here, take a blunt tapestry needle and some coarse string that approximates your hair color. Push the needle and thread underneath the top of the twist, out the other side. Bring around the back of the twist and push back into the hair from the other side. Repeat this a few times to sew the twist to your head. Secure in place by tying the two ends of thread together. Now, all you need to do is decorate! You can choose some thin ribbon, a scarf, or a beaded necklace to replicate the look of the ancient Greek women. Position this hair decoration so that it sits low at the back of your head, circles around the head, and wraps over the top of your head an inch or so back from your hairline. You can also let some face-framing tendrils fall in front of your ears. This is a really versatile hairstyle. It's easily completed in just a few minutes, but it can look regal with the right hair jewelry, or pastoral and relaxed with a head wrap scarf. It's also hella comfortable! Finally, another major period of ancient Greece that followed the Classical era was the Hellenistic period. This was an age of Greek influence throughout the Mediterranean immediately after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE that stretched to the emergence of the Roman Empire in the last century BCE. But because of the expanse of Alexander's Empire, it was also a period in which many other cultures in turn influenced Greece. Thus, Hellenistic culture was very cosmopolitan and diverse, representing fusions between Classical Greece and the indigenous culture of Greek colonies. The Greek hairstyles of the time period reflect this fusion of cultures, as well as the wealth achieved by the Empire. For instance, twists on the hair were pretty popular in Roman fashion, and fashionable Greek women incorporated this into their style. Braids also became more common, especially in Ptolemaic Egypt. Increasingly, the styles of wealthy women grew so complex that they needed specially trained slaves to do their hair in fancy contraptions like hairnets to hold it all in place. Speaking of hairnets, the hairstyle we'll replicate here is actually a style carved into the center of a hairnet from Alexandria. This depicts the goddess Aphrodite, who Ptolemaic queens often tried to emulate. This is one of the more simple styles from the period, but it's still a bit difficult to do on yourself, so don't feel bad if you need to practice. To start, part your hair down the center of the top of your head. Then divide the hair on each side of your head into four long sections. The parting between these sections should radiate out from the front of your central part. Since you'll have eight sections in all, four on each side, you'll want to keep them separated from each other while you style, or else you'll get really confused. To do this, you can use a time-period-appropriate method in which you wrap hair around a stick, spin the stick around once, wrap hair again, spin the hair stick, etc. several times. Then stick the hair stick into the bun of hair this process formed. This is really effective at holding hair in place, but also requires lots of hair sticks, so feel free to use modern hair clips, too, if that's all you have. Once you have the sections of hair on each side of your head and secure it out of the way, start twisting them one by one. Again, a hair stick can help with this. Take down a section of hair, lay the hair stick along the part below this section, and wrap the section around the hair stick several times. Slide out the hair stick, and your section is nicely twisted. Twist the remaining tail of the section a few more times, and then secure it out of the way again. Twist up all the sections on each side of your head in this way. Try to make the twists pretty tight at this stage, as they will loosen as you work with them in the next part. Loose twists are okay, and actually quite a desirable look for the time period, but you don't want them to be so loose that they lose their shape entirely. When you've completed all your twists, remove any clips or sticks holding them out of the way, and gather them all up at the lower back of your head. Tie some string around this hair to secure it into a ponytail. Then, ball up this hair into a bun at the back of the head. I'm now going to fit a small stretchy hairnet over this bun to hold it all in place and decorate the look, approximating that hairnet we saw earlier. A couple extra stitches with string can help secure it if it's not quite tight enough, or if it droops too much for your liking. Curly hair is really easy to secure things with this sewing technique. Finally, here's the finished version of our Hellenistic Queen hairstyle. I hope you found this video of ancient Greek hairstyling fun, educational, or inspiring. If you'd like to see more historical hairstyles, subscribe to Sibuplates Hairstyling on YouTube, or join me over on Patreon, where you can see extra behind-the-scenes research and contribute to future video ideas. Hope you all have a great day, and see you next time.