From my research I've found out a lot so far on Victorian hairstyles. Through the era women changed the fashion of hair quite drastically. In the early Victorians women were seen in portraiture to be wearing very sleek hair styles. From image research I've noticed many centre partings. Decoration was an important part of dressing the hair for Victorian women. I found texture in the portraits at the top of the hair flowing in an almost 'finger wave' motion at the top of the hair. Women wore tightly formulated buns on the top to the mid section of their scalp. Often these had plates within the buns or some kind of decorative flower or laced effect. The bun almost has a circular motion with hair going around the bun in a very sleek way. A lot of portraiture has women wearing a symmetrical style with curls facing inwards to the face with a straight part at the top, this would only be the very front section of the hair which seemed a little shorter to the back as women had very long hair as they never believed in cutting it. The condition of the front of the hair may have been shorter due to it maybe snapping off.
I've researched a few portraits of women at the time from the start of the Victorian era further to late Victorian times. Here is my idea of an early Victorian style. (This image has an unknown date. http://www.beauty-and-the-bath.com/beautiful-victorian-hairstyles.html)
The women has curls facing inwards to her face with a centre parting. The back of the hair is in a structured bun with decoration throughout the hair and crown of the head. She does have a little hair flowing down at the back of the head but usually women did not cut their hair so the women may've had extremely long hair to all fit into a tight bun which was fashionable.
Here I've practiced my own version of an inward curl ringlet. I used curling tongs to face the curl inward to get this effect.
The opposite side of the hair went well and I'm pleased with how it turned out. It looks like an early Victorian style.
At the back of the head I wanted to make sure the whole hair was going to be put up. At the time buns were quite simplistic so I just wrapped the hair around and pinned it in place to create this bun.
Next; for a mid Victorian hairstyle I wanted to create the look which hair is centre parted and then wrapped around the ear. This look was inspired by this image which has a slowly progressing lower bun. The hair looks a lot more relaxed and not so done up. It's a little more casual but still very sleek like the early Victorian styles.
I added a little twist on my recreation using a simple plat each side of the head which was brought slightly more forward to get the swooping effect around the ears on the sides.
Lastly the next part was to look into 'late Victorian' hair. I found the styles to be a lot more relaxed, romantic and looser. Curls were still a big part of doing the hair but hair tended to be worn down more often. Some of the curls in the image below look as if they're facing outwards from the face too which is different to the early hair styles.
Another hair image I really liked which had the hair done up in a loose brought forward to the face style. This style seems to still be similar to current trends in our century which is quite interesting.
I decided to take on board the styles of late Victorian hair from my research and incourporate these into my designs for practicing late Victorian hair. Because the styles are a lot looser and more romantic curl looks it's very important you must curl the entire hair before styling to give the hair more body and shape to give the final outcome.i tried to make the final style to have curls running downwards towards the back and the hair at the sides to be in a middle parting and for the mid section to be loosely up ontop of the crown.
The front of the hair was styled by curling inwards so it gave a wave on top of the parting.
Late Victorian hair is definitely on of my favourite styles to recreate and I look forward to practicing and perfecting these styles. The hair from the time reminds me of bridal hair too the way it's so flowing and pretty, which reminds me of Miss Haversham from Great Expectations original style from her wedding.
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