Hi everyone,
After a request from the lovely Elimy (read her sometimes-literary sometimes-make-uppy but always very good blog here: http://elimy.blogspot.com.au/ ) I've decided to have a quick word about hair taping.
Myself and my friends (shout-out to Aimee and Alana!!) do hair taping because it is a historical method of hair-styling. I usually think of it more like hair-controlling, because sometimes you really just need your hair out of the way, and this is a great way to achieve it. The most important reason that I like it is that my medieval hats don't like to stay on my head unless I have a hair-style (such as a hair-taped-style) to keep the hat stuck on there!
At Pencampwr, Aimee and Alana did my hair. I honestly have no idea what method they used to tape it up but it was different from the method that they used on Feast Night to tape up their own hair in the Italian style.
Here's a picture of us in our Italian gowns with our taped-up hair-styles:
From left to right: Aimee, Alana and Nancy. Aimee and Alana have their hair taped in an Italian style. I have my hair taped in some other style, that may or may not be historical and/or Italian, but it definitely held my hat on during the day and looked pretty cool at night.
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Photo credit: this is stolen shamelessly off Alana's facebook. I think Michael took it. Used according to the copyright law of "it belongs to my best friend so she won't be mad at me."
I was going to include a photo of our fronts, too, but it won't upload D: feel free to trawl facebook to find a picture though - it's likely that I'm tagged in one so it should be easy to locate, and I'm pretty sure everyone reading here is my facbeook friend! :P
Hopefully someday soon the girls will teach me how to do my hair the Italian way, which is how they're wearing their hair in the above picture. It looks so good!
The way that I had my hair there was pretty simple. They braided my hair into two plaits, twisted them up around my head and then sewed them on (with a ribbon and a blunt needle).
At our most recent event, Anealan Midwinter, I wore my hair taped in an entirely different style. Unfortunately I had no pictures but it's easy to describe.
I had my lovely sister Eileen braid my hair into two braids. While she did this, I held a ribbon at the top of my head (in the middle of my head I held the middle of the ribbon). Eileen treated the ribbon as if it were another strand of hair, working it into the braid. By the end I had one piece of ribbon going across the top of my head, ribbon braided through both braids and a length of ribbon hanging out of the end of both braids.
When I got to the feast, I wrapped the braids around my head (I wrapped down around and up and the ends of my braids ended up on top of my head so I had to tuck them in, it was very inconvenient). Then I continued wrapping the excess ribbon around my head, tying it off at the nape of my neck.
This method was very quick and easy to do, but of course nothing that easy ever really works out how you want it :/ naturally, during the evening, even though I had this hairstyle tucked away under my slightly-too-small hat, it began to cause problems. Because the braids weren't actually sewn into place, they moved on my head. And then my hat wouldn't stay on D: which mostly wasn't a problem, until we started dancing and all the bouncing was throwing my hat off, so Aimee had to quickly retie my ribbons on the dancefloor so that my hair would stay up.
Moral of the story: don't skip the sewing!! Even if it is quicker that way and easier on your sister.
I can't find the website that I usually look at for hair taping info so I'm going to link you to two that I just googled (but have read before, I promise).
This one has very detailed instructions on a method of Italian hair taping. It may even be the same method that Aimee & Alana use! The reason that I've linked it is that it contains a gallery of pictures that might clarify some of the instructions. It also mentions the method that I used (the pin the ribbon to your head and braid it in method) so at least I feel like that was a legit way to do it! :P
This one was written by an SCA person for the SCA, so at least you can be sure that it's documentable pre-1600! It's good in that it offers two differing styles with clear diagrams along the way. Notable here is that she recommends hair-twisting rather than braiding, which seems to match the pictures that she provides as evidence. However, I see no reason why you couldn't adapt these methods to involve braiding because I know I, at least, would find that a lot easier than twisting.
My personal area of interest is not the Italian renaissance. I prefer England, particularly in the late 15th and maybe the very very early 16th centuries. I haven't found any pictures that document hair-taping-styles in England in this period. But I haven't looked very hard yet and I'm hoping that I find some in the future, because it is a really super convenient hair-style!
I recommend trying it out, even if it's just for fun. :)
♥Nancy♬
1 comment:
Thanks for the pictures, and AW thanks for the link.
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