“Frizzled” Hair Styles

Europeans in the 18th Century saw hair as an indicator of character: hence so many of the cartoons mocking women with overlarge, overly elaborate hairstyles. Smooth hair was “civilized,” while African hair, particularly the most tightly coiled, kinky hair was seen as mere wool: an indicator to their white contemporaries that they were “wild and disorderly”. The Europeans did not see African hairstyles as remotely important, when in reality they date back over 3000 years, and could contain complex communications, indicating occasion, religion, family, status, age, marital status, and occupation.

Agostino Brunias, West Indian Women of Colour with a Child and Black Servant, c. 1780

However, forced labour in America meant less time to spend on hairstyles, so they became simplified, and mingled different cultures together. In many cases enslaved women working in households were forced to cover their hair with headwraps by the Tignon laws and thanks to the jealousy of their mistresses – tightly coiled African hair with its height and volume is (ironically) far more suited to the elaborate high hairstyles of the white upper classes.

Agostino Brunias, Servants [Enslaved People?] Washing a Deer, c.1775

While some Black people in colonial America used hair powders, it is of note that even they kept their natural hair texture, as a form of passive resistance against white beauty standards and control over their bodies.

Antoine Vestier, Portrait of a Lady with a Book, c.1780

In the later 1770s through to the beginning of the 1790s, many European women adopted a “frizzed” hairstyle, very similar to an afro. They weren’t shy about where they had acquired the style, either:

French women are “covered with a vast load of false hair, which is Frizzled on the forehead so as to exactly resemble the wooly heads of the Guinea negros.”

Tobias Smollet, 1760s
Galerie des Modes, 39th issue, 3rd Illustration

1780s fashion plates displayed the “Coiffure a la Jamaique” alongside such styles as the “Robe a la Creole”.

While “wooly” hair was seen by Europeans as morally degenerate when it was on the heads of Black people, on the heads of white European women it was evidence of their status: they had the time and money to be able to twist and set their hair into the volume required by fashion. Such appropriations of Black hairstyles continue to this day: such styles that are looked down on as “unprofessional,” “ghetto,” or “ugly” on the heads of Black people are seen as “chic,” “stylish,” and “groundbreaking” when worn by white models and celebrities.

Even the legislation against Black hair has continued, with girls being sent home from school for their afros being “too big,” or for wearing their natural hair, or women being denied jobs if they don’t cut off their dreadlocks. There is a complete lack of understanding within modern day white society about the sheer quantity of cultural significance that Black hairstyles contain, and I will confess to being guilty of only knowing about them in the context of the 18th Century in America.

Agostino Brunias, Market Day, Rosaeu, Dominica

For more information on this subject, it is very much worth looking at Cheyney McKnight’s essay in the American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Beauty, and also at her YouTube channel, Not Your Momma’s History.

A Brief History of the Fashion Magazine Part 2

Louis XIV as a Young Man, Jean Nocret, 1655, Museo del Prado

The French Crown was, unfortunately for its finances, unable to tax the nobility, thanks to the law rendering them exempt. Louis XIV (or rather, his finance minister Colbert) found a clever way around this, however. By investing Crown money into the manufacture of luxury goods: silk weaving, glass blowing, and lace making, for instance, and then encouraging the nobles to spend vast quantities of money on these luxuries, it was possible to enrich the country and the state.

Fashion is to France what the gold mines of Peru are to Spain.

Jean-Baptiste Colbert
Jean-Baptiste Colbert by Philippe de Champaigne, 1655

This encouragement of consumerism met with the rise of the early newspaper, and in 1672 the combination resulted in the publication of the Mercure Galant. Published by Jean Donneau de Visé, it reported on who was wearing what when, and where different items could be bought or made.

Mercure Galant Frontispiece

The new female couturiers (who gained guild status in 1675), were able to respond to demand far quicker than the male tailors, and were helped enormously by the publication of this magazine. Between them, trends could be set far more quickly, and the concept of fashion “seasons” emerged. It should perhaps be mentioned that female couturiers initially gained their business from the import, appropriation, and imitation of several forms of eastern dress (including the Japanese Kimono and the Indian Jama), but I’ll deal with that in more detail in a separate post.

Habit d’Hiver, Mercure Galant 1678

The Mercure Galant, while effective in its spreading of French fashions and the concept of the seasons, was the only one of its kind for nearly a century after its first publication. It did, however, cement France as a centre of fashion in Europe, something that Colbert had always been working towards.

Habit d’Este, Mercure Galant, April 1676