The mid-1760s into the early 1770s brings a great deal of change to women’s heads. While pomatum and powder were ubiquitous in France, they still weren’t quite the thing in Britain and the Colonies until the early 1770s. This is a time of powdery divides: to powder or not to powder? In A Treatise on the Hair (1770), David Ritchie describes each hairstyle worn either with or without powder, and discusses how finicky some of his English customers are with these products:
“There are many ladies who complain that pomatum is disagreeable to them, and are very desirous their hair may be dress’d without it when powder’d; but is found by experience that the hair cannot be dress’d near so well; for without a sufficiency of pomatum, the hair will become too dry, and will not retrain the powder […] and occasion many loose hairs appearing, which will disfigure the dress.”[1]
Just as Ritchie describes, we find working with pomatum and powder makes dressing the hair much easier and we choose to use it in our tutorial, but opt for a very light powder application at the end to look more English or American versus French.
It’s in these transitional years that we see the beginnings of the great vertical follicle explosion that peaked in the late 1770s. While it is tempting to make your hair as tall as possible, we suggest practicing caution. Does your ensemble and target time period really warrant super-tall hair?
Additionally, in this chapter we have created two millinery projects perfectly suited to the late 1760s. The popular bergere hat is a great piece to wear across multiple decades, but our favorite project from this chapter is the “Proto-Pouf”. [2] It’s a unique piece of trendy headgear seen in Europe, England and America for this relatively short time, and we think you’ll love it!
We hope you enjoy experimenting with this transitional period in hairdressing; read on for our step-by-step tutorial.
