High roll

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Marie Antoinette wearing a high roll. Marie Antoinette with decadent hair.jpg
Marie Antoinette wearing a high roll.

A high roll is a hairstyle that Western women wore in the late 1700s. It was especially associated with France, England, and what later became the United States. [1] [2]

Contents

The hairstyle was considered a status symbol because it required the wearer to sit for hours while a professional hairdresser set the roll. [1] [2]

The hairstyle could be very tall and make the wearer's head seem twice as high. First, the woman's hair would be combed. Then the woman or her hairdresser would add pomatum to the hair so it could be shaped. The pomatum would have treated fat, oil and perfumes or spices in it. This would add a pleasant scent, kill headlice, and help hold the hair in place. Women would add extra hair collected from cows, horses, other people, or their own collected hair from their hairbrushes for extra volume. Women and hairdressers would place pillows or wire frames inside the hair to hold it up. [3] The hair would be placed in curlers and left overnight. Some women would make curls along the sides or neck with curlers. The hair was held in place with pins. The hair could be natural color or colored gray, brown or white with powder. The hairstyle could be as high as 2 feet (0.61 meters). [2]

The hairstyle produced some odor and many women complained of itching, which they soothed with ivory head-scratchers specially designed to leave the hairstyle undisturbed. The high roll was redone only every few weeks. Between hairdressing sessions, women would sleep with traps for headlice and mice on their heads. [3]

Some women, for example, Queen Marie Antoinette of France, would wear feathers, jewelry, or sculptures of plants and animals in their high hair. [3] Some women said that it would itch. [1]

History

Marie Antoinette in 1769 wearing an early high roll. Marie Antoinette Young3.jpg
Marie Antoinette in 1769 wearing an early high roll.

In the beginning of the 1700s, the fashion for women's hair was relatively natural, with curls and caps. Over the course of the century, men's tendency to wear wigs and more complex styles spread to women. The earliest high rolls were observed in the late 1760s and became taller over time. They began in France and later appeared in London and North America. [1] By the end of the 1700s, the fashion for more natural-looking hair on women returned.

Criticism

English critics complained that English women had copied the style from France. American critics complained that women had copied it from England this being in the 1770s, during the American Revolutionary War with England. During the war, many Americans favored economic and cultural independence from Britain as well as political. They would wear homespun clothes instead of imported cloth and preferred simpler adornments. During the war, the high roll came to be seen as associated with the pro-British Tory loyalists. [2]

Other critics said the feathers in the hairstyles made women look like male soldiers with plumed helmets. American critics also complained that the hairstyle made white women look like African-American men. In the 1770s, African-American men wore their hair in a bunch over their foreheads. Rich men also worried about their wives and daughters spending time with male hairdressers. [1]

One woman in New York described several women wearing high rolls as having "an acre and a half of shrubbery, besides grass-plots, tulip beds, kitchen gardens, peonies, etc." [3]

There are many political cartoons making fun of the high roll and other high hairstyles. [1] [4]

In the television show Turn , women in New York and Philadelphia wear and talk about high rolls.

Related Research Articles

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Wig Head accessory that mimics hair

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Hairdresser Person whose occupation is to cut or style hair

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A macaroni was a pejorative term used to describe a fashionable fellow of mid-18th-century England. Stereotypically, men in the macaroni subculture dressed, spoke, and behaved in an unusually sentimental and androgynous manner.

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1650–1700 in Western European fashion Costume in the second half of the 17th century

Fashion in the period 1650–1700 in Western European clothing is characterized by rapid change. The style of this era is known as Baroque. Following the end of the Thirty Years' War and the Restoration of England's Charles II, military influences in men's clothing were replaced by a brief period of decorative exuberance which then sobered into the coat, waistcoat and breeches costume that would reign for the next century and a half. In the normal cycle of fashion, the broad, high-waisted silhouette of the previous period was replaced by a long, lean line with a low waist for both men and women. This period also marked the rise of the periwig as an essential item of men's fashion.

Pouf

The pouf or pouffe also "toque" is a hairstyle and a hairstyling support deriving from 18th-century France. It was made popular by the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette (1755–1793), when she wore it in June 1775 at the coronation of her husband Louis XVI, triggering a wave of French noblewomen to wear their hair in the same manner. The hairstyle would become popular across Europe in the 1780s.

1960s in fashion Costume and fashion in the 1960s

Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends. It was a decade that broke many fashion traditions, mirroring social movements during the time. Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centers received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.

1910s in Western fashion Costume and fashion in the 1910s

Fashion from 1910–1919 in the Western world was characterized by a rich and exotic opulence in the first half of the decade in contrast with the somber practicality of garments worn during the Great War. Men's trousers were worn cuffed to ankle-length and creased. Skirts rose from floor length to well above the ankle, women began to bob their hair, and the stage was set for the radical new fashions associated with the Jazz Age of the 1920s.

Hair roller

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Roman hairstyles

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History of Italian fashion

The history of Italian fashion is a chronological record of the events and people that impacted and evolved Italian fashion into what it is today. From the Middle Ages, Italian fashion has been popular internationally, with cities in Italy producing textiles like velvet, silk, and wool. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Italian fashion for both men and women was extravagant and expensive, but the fashion industry declined during the industrialization of Italy. Many modern Italian fashion brands were founded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the 1950s and 1960s, Italian fashion regained popularity worldwide. While many clients of Italian fashion designers are celebrities, Italian fashion brands also focus on ready-to-wear clothes.

1775–1795 in Western fashion Western fashion throughout the late 1700s

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Victory rolls

Victory rolls are a women's hairstyle that was popular from 1940 to 1945, with a recent rise during the 21st century, characterized by voluminous curls of hair that are either on top of the head or frame the face. Victory rolls are closely associated with the pin-up look and are achieved using various backcombing, rolling, pinning, and curling techniques.

The natural hair movement is a movement which encourages women and men of African descent to embrace their natural afro-textured hair. It originated in the United States during the 1960s, with its most recent iteration occurring in the 2000s.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kate Haulman. "A Short History of the High Roll". Common Place. Retrieved October 28, 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Merrill D. Smith, ed. (August 25, 2015). The World of the American Revolution: A Daily Life Encyclopedia. ABC-CLIO. p. 246. ISBN   9781440830280 . Retrieved October 30, 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Keith Krawczynski (2013). Daily Life in a Colonial City. Greenwood. p. 400. ISBN   9780313334191 . Retrieved October 30, 2020.
  4. Gemma Hollman (September 11, 2017). "Historical Fashion: Georgian Women's Hairstyles". Just History Posts. Retrieved October 28, 2020.