Bygone Beehive

My husband says everything great and wonderful comes out of Chicago. Hometown pride, of course. So it wouldn't surprise him at all to learn that the beehive was the creation of a Chicagoan, Margaret Vinci Heldt, who passed away Friday, June 10 at the age of 98.

 dotpolka - beehive - 2005 -Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 unmodified

 Caryn Rousseau/Associated Press

Margaret invented the beehive in 1960, when she was asked by Modern Beauty Shop magazine to create a look to mark the new decade. The bouffant was already a popular style for women, but Heldt's beehive took the bouffant to new heights.

'They told me: "We want you to come up with something really different."' Her invention was published in the February, 1960 issue.

The beehive, nor the bouffant, could have been possible without the postwar invention of aerosol hair spray. The hairstyle requires backcombing the hair and setting it. According to Heldt, it was a salon favorite because "it would hold its shape for a week between appointments."

“I started building up height from a basic updo by winding hair over Pepsi cans, back-combing at first and then – inspiration, I spiraled a layer of hair smoothly around the form. This was then followed by a major session of hair spraying to hold it all in place.” Glamourdaze.com

Via Daily Mail UK

What's so interesting is that the hair-do was not inspired by the honeycomb house for bees, but rather by a hat – a black, velvet fez-style cap.

“I always would look at that little hat and say ‘Someday, I’m going to create a hairstyle that would fit under the hat, and when you take the hat off, the hairstyle would be there.’” New York Times

The cap was decorated with two beads resembling bees, and the hairstyle was ultimately named by the magazine's editor who felt the bee beads fit the 'do. While that hat has yet to make its way to a museum, Heldt's “Lady Bee” hair mannequin is in the collection of the Chicago History Museum.

The hairstyle might have germinated in Chicago, but it certainly became an international sensation.

 L: Dusty Springfield, 1966 NME Pollwinners Concert / R: Ronettes, 1963

 Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961

Artistic hair cut

Jackson Pollock cutting his father's hair, 1927. From the Archives of American Art.

The Hair Craft Project | Artprize

Art Fag City has some harsh words for Sonya Clark's winning submission to this year's Artprize.

I do not approve of the Grand jury’s decision to split the grand prize with Sonya Clark’s “The Haircraft Project.” This was an entirely formulaic piece. A series of hairdressers were asked to style Clark’s hair. They were then photographed in such a way that they were merely a blurry presence behind their creation. After the shot was taken, they were asked to translate their hairstyle onto stretched canvas. The photographs were terrible. The work on stretched canvas inevitably ended up in the center. It tells us nothing we didn’t know already about women’s hair.

Granted, this might not be the strongest work Clark's done but I'm not sure it's as bad as the generally negative Paddy Johnson would have you. Shamefully, I haven't yet written a post on Sonya Clark's extensive body of hair-centric work, but don't you worry....coming soon!

The Laquered Look

The socialite, heiress to the Singer (sewing machine) fortune, and editor of Harper's Bazaar Paris, Mrs Reginald (Daisy) Fellowes was a noted fashionable figure frequently found in the pages of Vogue magazine. One of their fashion editors, Bettina Ballard, called her “the most elegant and most talked-about woman in Paris.” She was the embodiment of '30s chic but also bold in her tastes and her attitude, daring to pull off even the most extreme surrealist fashion statements by designer Elsa Schiaparelli. (Think monkey fur, lobster dress, and shoe hat - even Schiap's Shocking Pink was created for her!)

In this 1935 photograph taken by Horst P. Horst for Vogue (who often used Tungsten lighting to heighten an image's dramatic contrast and shadowy quality), Daisy dons a satin Mandarin dress by Schiap and an eerie and fantastic lacquered wig by Antoine de Paris.

Born Antoni Cierplikowski (1884-1976) in Poland, Antoine moved to Paris and became the celebrity hair stylist of the 1920s and '30s. His clients included Josephine Baker, Claudette Colbert, Marlena Dietrich, Greta Garbo, and Elsa Schiaparelli. He eventuality set up 67 salons in places as far afield as Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, London, and Melbourne.

Josephine Baker in a wig by Antoine de Paris.
Photo by: George Hoyningen-Huene, 1934, Vogue.

He is credited with trends such as the bob, tinting grey hair blue, and the white/blonde streaked forelock, but what I find most intriguing are these shellacked wigs worn as hats. 1. Just wow! It's easy to see why Antoine became a "favorite of the Surrealists -- Man Ray, Salvador Dali & Cocteau in particular -- and his work certainly complemented the oneiric fillip the Surrealists managed to inveigle into every early 20th Century art-form & medium." 2.

Clockwise from top left: Wig by Antoine of Paris, 1937. Photo by Brassaï / Cécile Sorel's wig for a performance by the
Comédie-Française. Photo by Brassai / Françoise Rosay, 1932. /  Photo of Arletty by Madame D'Ora (Dora Kallmus), 1932.

Man Ray took this photograph of Elsa wearing a lacquered Antoine wig around 1933.

"Antoine made me some fabulous wigs for evening and even pour le sport. I wore them in white, in silver, in red for the snow of St. Moritz, and would feel utterly unconscious of the stir they created. Antoine was…certainly the most progressive and the most enterprising coiffeur of these times. I wore these wigs with the plainest of dresses so that they became a part of the dress and not an oddity." 3.  ~ Elsa Schiaparelli

Wigs by Antoine from 1932. "Spinelly" style on the right

Wig by Antoine de Paris / coat by Sarah Lipska / photo by Paweł Kurzawski

1. Mary Louise Roberts, "Samson and Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Women's Fashion in 1920s France," The American Historical Review, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Jun., 1993), pp. 657-684.
2. deep space daguerreotype

3. Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda, Schiaparelli & Prada: Impossible Conversations, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012, page 50.

One Single Strand of Elvis Presley Hair

One single strand of Elvis Presley's hair is on sale today!
(Well was on sale as it was on English time)

 

But one single stand, mounted in the middle of a gold record, was up for auction in Northumberland. And it came with a significant letter of authenticity.

Apparently a man named Thomas Morgan was friends with the crooner's hairdresser, Homer Gilleland. Homer would go on tour with Elvis, bagging and saving his hair clippings. Seems like there should be thousands of these framed mementos out there, if the hairdresser had a whole bag bagged. (and yes, there are. "As he worked with Elvis off and on up through the 1970s, Gilleland kept locks of Presley's hair, attaching them to business cards and ultimately giving large collections to friends.")

Julien's Auctions, June 2012. Winning bid: $4,160

As it turns out, today was not the only time Elvis fans had the chance to own the hair of their favorite rock star. There have been a number of offerings, but in 2009, a clump of the Rock and Roll singer's hair fetched $15,000 at a Chicago auction. The hair clipping, which belonged to the late Gary Pepper who ran an Elvis fan club and was a friend, was believed to have been trimmed from Elvis Presley’s head when he joined the Army in 1958.

And if you're asking yourself if Elvis is the only famous singer whose hair people covet, well you'd be correct to think there must be. Justin Beiber, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and Keith Richards have all had their locks up for sale.

There is such a long history of fetishizing hair and other body parts, and it makes you see the ceremony around religious reliquaries as being in the same camp of hero- and celebrity-worship. The times have changed but folks' behavior and the song remains the same.

So how much did Elvis' precious single strand sell for in the end?    ..... drumroll ....    about $250.

Nina Leen and the Hair of American Women

A woman showing her fashionable wartime hairstyle called Winged Victory. NYC. 
All photos are courtesy of LIFE magazine archives and are captioned and dated accordingly.

This wonderful shot of a woman's hairstyle decorated with birds is from the August 23, 1943 issue of LIFE magazine and was part of a story about "amateur vs. professional ways of achieving a summer coiffure." It was taken by photographer Nina Leen, who shot thousands of photographs over the course of her career for LIFE magazine. She captured (I'd say lovingly) American woman in their day-to-day lives from the 1940s until 1972, when the magazine ceased publishing weekly. Her photoessays of housewives, young working girls, and socialites reveal the idealized femininity of the time and show both the public and private lives of women.

I present a few of Ms. Leen's photos here that speak to women and their hair.

Women Sitting and Reading under Hairdryers at Rockefeller Center "Pamper Club." 
July 14, 1952.

Wig Posing under Drier.
September 1958

Model Vikki Dougan attaching hair clips to wig.
July 1952

Model Vikki Dougan Wearing Attachable Bun of Extra Hair, Next to Other Wigs.
July 1952

Wigs.
September 1958

Models posing in wigs.
September 1958

Women's Hairpieces.
September 15, 1958
Singer Julie Wilson on phone beside closet with hanging evening dresses and wigs on top shelf.

Students Learning How to Put All of Their Hair on Top of Their Head,
Underneath the Shower Caps.
April 16, 1945.

Picture of an Woman with a "Butch Haircut."
Date unknown.

Triplets Christina Dees and Megan Dees Modeling Their Braids Before Getting Hair Cuts.
May 8, 1964

Location: Webster Groves, MO, US

Popular Shoulder Length Hairstyle Worn by Teenagers
August 4, 1947

Teen-Age Girls
December 11, 1944

Six HS sorority girls re-enacting solemn,
secret initiation ritual by candlelight for photographer because only a real member has ever seen the real thing.

Hairdresser’s Hot Dog

Hairdresser’s Hot Dog, by John Drysdale, c.1960

"The owner of a London hair salon brought his Labrador Mastiff cross to work and it always sat on a chair beneath a hair dryer. Whenever newcomers asked about its curious mannerism the hairdresser adorned his dog with a ready-made hairnet-curler-wig which made it look as ridiculous at its human neighbours. Talk about it advertised his business in the area."

Snip Snip Sniff Sniff

When I was young, my British mum cut her long hair. She had let her hair grow most of her life and it cascaded down her back to her rear. When she decided to cut her hair, she chose to get a graduated bob at the Vidal Sassoon salon on Maiden Lane in San Francisco. (This was around 1974). The cut epitomized elegant, hip modernity. And it has survived the test of time....as my mum continues wearing that style to this day.

Left: October 1963 issue of British Vogue. Actress Nancy Kwon with a Sassoon bob.
Right: Grace Coddington in her sculptural "Five Point", circa 1965, with Vidal Sassoon

Vidal Sassoon died a week ago today. He was 84 years old.  Sassoon was a elemental figure in the "Swinging London" scene of the 1960s, creating iconic looks such as the graduated bob (above left) and the five-point cut, sported by model (and current Vogue editor) Grace Coddington (above right).  He transformed women's styles to such a degree that the designer Mary Quant donned him the "Chanel of hair."

"His timing was perfect: As women's hair was liberated, so were their lives," Allure magazine Editor-in-Chief Linda Wells told The Associated Press in a written statement. "Sassoon was one of the original feminists."

Vidal, in London, surrounded by models showing his new cuts for 1976 called,
clockwise from lower left: The Hummingbird, Question Mark, Feathers, Tomboy and Silver Lady

Sassoon was a sensation because his sassy wash-and-wear cuts freed women from towers of teasing and hours of hairspray. “My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous,” he said in 1993. “Women were going back to work; they were assuming their own power. They didn’t have time to sit under the dryer anymore.”

His hairstyles provide a remarkable legacy, but Sassoon also became a global success because he  understood marketing. He developed hair care and styling products, opened salons in the US (and elsewhere), and established Vidal Sassoon Academies to teach aspiring stylists how to envision haircuts based on a client's bone structure. He also transformed the haircutting experience by making it glamorous.

Sassoon founded a system of hair cutting that worked, and has lasted, because his hair dressers always take into consideration the person who will wear the style. They tailor looks to help realize a woman's beauty regardless of her age.

"Actually short hair is a state of mind … not a state of age."

This is precisely why his bob looked good on my mom, and continues to look good on her as she enters her 70s. Genius. "If you don't look good, we don't look good."

(A good obit with details on his life can be found here.)