(old-fashioned jazzy music) - And so, dear friend, I am coming to you on this fine evening with something a little bit different. I'm here at the National Arts Club here in merry New York
where Lauren and Abby, of American Duchess, are celebrating the release of their newest publication on 18th century beauty by demonstrating for us the magic of said 18th century hairstyling live. You may already be familiar with American Duchess,
the glorious, historical reproduction footwear brand
that, as you may know, I pretty much wear almost exclusively. And, no, nothing in this
here video is sponsored. Lauren and Abby have
very kindly allowed me to bring you along for the evening. So, put the kettle on,
take up your needles and let's find out precisely how to achieve those lofty
18th century confections, whilst, of course, busting
a few myths along the way. (old-fashioned, jazzy music) - What's fascinating
about 18th century hair is the change in texture
that our hair products do. Going to the basics of
18th century hair products, we have pomade and powder. Pomade is an animal fat-based pomade. Recipes ranged from different animals, but usually, it's gonna
be a pig lard-based fat, and then lamb tallow or mutton tallow. Mutton tallow is hard and crumbly. Pig's lard is very soft and creamy. By mixing them together, you actually create a really nice paste. And then, it is a scented product as well. So you must render it,
clean it, de-stink it, (laughter) so that it does not smell like bacon. The recipe that we use in the book is what we're using for Leia's hair. It's scented with clove and lemon oil. Clove actually is used as
a natural pest deterrent. So just very quickly, no,
this did not attract bugs. No, it did not attract lice. No, it did not attract fleas. Let's just nix that myth
right in the tuchus. So the first step is putting on pomade. You take modern hair, which
is very shiny and smooth, just like what we like
in the 21st century. Shiny equals clean. Shiny equals healthy and
all this other nonsense, which isn't actually true. And then, once the hair is pomaded, then that's when you add the powder. Powder was a starch-based
product in the 18th century. Traditionally it was wheat starch. The powder will react with the animal fat. And if you've ever made
a cake, it's like baking. So the starch expands and all of a sudden you go from having really fine, thin hair that doesn't do anything to all of a sudden, you have, like, Pantene Pro-V or Herbal Essence. Like, and you're just like, whoosh. And it's sculptable and it's moldable because it has all this texture and it has this tackiness
that is very subtle to it, so you can really shape and form the hair once it's been pomaded and powdered. All of a sudden, it goes from looking wet to now it's like light and
fluffy and airy and soft. That's what happens when
you pomade and powder hair. - Of course, they did not have hair spray in the 18th century, so
how did they do those really big styles without the
hair going all over the place? Interestingly, the pomade and the powder is also how people cleaned their hair. They didn't regularly
take baths and showers the way that we do today. That doesn't mean they
were dirty, nasty people. It just means that they cleaned
themselves in other ways. One of the ways that they dealt with hair is to do the pomading and the powdering. We, today, go, "Ok, I've
done my 18th century hair. "I'm gonna go home and I'm
gonna wash this out with shampoo "and I'm gonna go back to normal "21st century life tomorrow." Of course, they're not doing
that in the 18th century. They are continuing to put on more pomade and more powder and comb it through. So, the next thing that
Abby is going to do is she's going to part Leia's hair. She's going to put the
part the hair into sections that will later be styled. We do this with modern styling as well. When you're gonna work
on the front of the hair, you don't want to deal with the back all together at the same time. Then we're going to put
a cushion on Leia's head. This is the cushion. Oops, upside down. That's the cushion. This is made out of wool
knit and it is stuffed with horse hair. You'll notice there's a
hole in the middle of this. So we call this the doughnut. She's going to make an
anchor for this to go over. So she's going to grab the
hair right off the crown, braid it, and coil it into a, sort of a top knot. We'll put the cushion over the top and then we'll pin down into the hole, into the braid so that
it doesn't wiggle around. In the 1770s, hair starts to ascend. The really, really, really big hairstyles that we equate with the 18th century were actually only in fashion
for a relatively short time, about 1772 to 1775 or so. By 1776 the hair starts
to widen out at the top. It is still very high and
it slopes up in the back. That's what this cushion
is going to create. It's difficult to see it now, but you can see how there's,
like, a little whoop up at the back. When we put the hair on this, and of course, it's going to
add a lot of volume on top, and she will have hair
that's higher in the back than it is in the front. - This is what would support the ship. So these would be fairly
soft to fairly hard supports. They would have buckram in
them, they could potentially be even wired. Léonard, who created this
design, he would have these made and then they would go on top of the head. So this is also where
the height comes from, not necessarily the hairstyle itself, but what is put on top of the hairstyle after it is done. So Leia's cushion is actually very small. I'm almost a little concerned
it's almost too small. But she has so much hair
that the hair itself is going to be built on top of it and that's going to add height. But once we add the pouf, all
of a sudden it's going to go from like here to like there. Because of the gauze,
the ribbons, the flowers, the bits on top of it. That's where the height comes from. When we look at these
images of these women in the 18th century and
we hear these mythologies, this idea that everything
was like, three feet tall. Everything. But when you actually start
looking at the portraiture in the 18th century, and you start looking at the proportions, you'll realize it's not actually that tall in the front. It might be that tall in
the back, or close to it, but usually it's the hair
bits that really amp it up. Most of the time the front
is usually about a forehead. So we're looking at maybe
four or five inches. That's it in the front. And then it's what's on top of it that helps push it up. So proportion in the 18th
century is very, very important because you want to
balance out your outfit. Hair shapes in the 18th century
shift very, very quickly. This is actually one of
the reasons why we focused on the last half of the 18th century instead of the entire
18th century in the book. To go back to what Lauren's
doing right now really quickly, is she has started taking
Leia's hair and smoothing it up and over and into
the hole in the cushion. There are multiple ways you
could do 18th century cushions, but frankly, having a hole
in it makes it a lot easier because if you have really long hair, if you have a hole, you can push the hair down into the hole. If it's super long, like
Leia's, you can actually pull it, then, back out and curl it and lay on top and organize it that way. But by having a hole, or a
doughnut shape, essentially in your hair cushion, you
can hide a lot of sin. And they hid a lot of
sin in the 18th century. So I was just asked how often do they actually wash their hair. The answer is, unless they
have to medically, they don't. (crowd laughing)
- More pomade, more powder. - The key to this is combing your hair. So when you read 18th
century hairdressing manuals, they're always very
adamant, comb your hair, comb your hair, comb your
hair, comb your hair. Every day comb your hair. If you don't comb your
hair, it's gonna get itchy, you can get dandruff, you can get bits. So combing your hair helps
pull the powder and the pomade away from the scalp. It helps run it through the hair. It helps remove the oils from the hair and run it down. Now combs in the 18th century
were made out of horn and bone so they're much better
at pulling oils away than our plastic and
silicone combs are today. Now, we are using modern hair combs because I have looked for
a good horn hair comb. They are not easy to find. They did have colored
powders in the 18th century. They did have a good time with that. So there are historic
recipes for pink hair powder, blue hair powder, yellow hair powder, brown hair powder, black hair powder. All the whole spectrum of
different hair powder colors. Gray as well. Depending on what was
trendy, you could actually play with temporary hair colors as well. When we get into the 1790s hair powder kind of starts to fall out of favor. You get a nice (French
word) kind of look going on. There's a lot more humanism
and pastoralism coming in to all parts of art and
society, including fashion. So there is a bit of a scene
change with what is desirable. The English style comes forward in, particularly men's wear,
but also women's wear. It begins to, let's not
say overtake the French, not to insult any French people, but it has a heavy influence
on what is being worn in Paris at the same time. Hair powder, by the mid-1790s or so, because of laws and revolutions, I guess, falls out of favor. People are still wearing hair powder, but not nearly in the
quantities that they were. You had to have a special
certificate to buy it. Yes, it was heavily, heavily
taxed in England, good point. So hygiene begins to change. Whether it's because of that
or it was happening anyway, through scientific study
with hygiene changing, bathing becoming more of a thing. It all happened in this period. It's a major, major period in history in which so, so many things societally and fashionably are changing. What is the stick that Abby was using? Or the bar that looks like soap? It is not soap. You cannot stickith the shadow
back onto you with this. It is hard pomade. This is made with the lamb's tallow, the pig's lard, and beeswax. It's a harder, more crumbly
version of the pomade and it is a great tool for
making hair stick straight up. It's stiffer, it's harder. It helps with keeping the hair up, especially in a very
curly style like I have. My hair kind of wants
to fall forward up here and so I would use this to
get it to stand straight up. It's a common misconception
that all women wore wigs. Men wore wigs for certain things. Court appearances, for instance,
men would wear a peruke. It's very obvious when they're doing it because you can see a hard hair line and you can see the powder on the forehead and sometimes on the collar too. But you don't really see
that in portraiture of women. So what we found is that
women depicted in wigs on purpose, it was usually satire. It was making fun of the woman for being vain or dirty or old. Women definitely wore hair pieces. You can buy hair pieces. You can buy what's called a toupee, which is what's making up 90% of my hair. You could buy a chignon if
you didn't have anything in the back, like I don't. - You have very short hair. - I do, I have a little pixie bob. And you can buy buckles,
which are the large curls that are on the side of the head. You could stack as many
of somebody else's hair, buckles, up the side of
your head as you wanted. These were all readily available. Anybody could buy them,
they were not expansive. They were made from human hair, cause that's what reacts
nicely with the pomade and powders, what was available. And you'd get it in a matching color. So that is completely
historically accurate. But a full wig with a
hard hairline for women, it was not a thing. So even if you just had
a twee little bit of hair in the front, you would
want to blend that in because you want to hide the fact that you might be wearing
hairpieces and wigs. It wasn't something to be ashamed of, but it's not something
that you would want, like, an obvious display of that going on. Yes, the men were wearing
wigs in some instances. Men were also wearing their
natural hair in some instances. It was pomaded and powdered
because it's the way that you're cleaning your hair. You could corral your
ponytail in the back, your chignon in the back. What's the name of the back? The queue, that's what it is. Or you could let it hang
down in a nice little curl. There are lots and lots
and lots of portraits of men with powder all over their collars. So yes, it was a thing
that men were doing. They were not ashamed of it,
they weren't trying to hide it. What did the common folk
do for their hairstyle? We get this question a lot. They pomaded and powdered their hair. (crowd laughing) It is the way that people
were cleaning their hair. The cushions that they were using would not have been as big or extravagant. They weren't going to be
putting ostrich feathers in their hair. But a little bit of volume in the front. Even today, you get up, no matter what socio-economic class you
are, and you do something with your hair. Some people do nothing with their hair, they put on a baseball cap or cap. Some people spend hours
curling their hair. It doesn't matter what class they are. People still want to
be clean and well kept. - The hairpins were
wired, like steel wire. They came in all different sizes. You could get really long ones. Don't we wish we could get those today? You could get little short ones. The pomading and powder
started in the 17th century with Louis XIV's mistress,
the Marquise de Montespan, according to people in the 18th
century writing about that. I've seen portraits in the way back to the early 17th century
and the late 16th century where it kind of looks
like they might be pomading and powdering their hair, but I haven't found resources for it yet. It's a really, really good question because of the way that hygiene changes, but more importantly why. Why did they do that? Why is this the only period
where they take animal fat and they combine it with starch. In our book, like we said earlier, Lauren and I were very
adamant that we wanted to represent a broad spectrum
of women for this book. We did not want it to be
white females, brown hair. That's very boring. We wanted to show different hair textures and different hair
types because costumers, specifically historic costumers, we're all over the place. You know, it's not just for
one group of people to enjoy. Historic costuming has a
wonderfully diverse community, as do re-enactors, theatres, movies. You know, it's not about that. It's about everyone and the community and we wanted everyone to feel included. However, we understood that
the black American experience is not something that
we could write about, and that it's something
that needs to be addressed. So we asked Cheyney, who is
from Not Your Momma's History, who is a friend and a living historian. She works, actually, for the New York Historical Society now, as well as her own company,
Not Your Momma's History. She interprets black, the black experience in the 18th century, whether
it's an enslaved individual or as a free individual. We asked Cheyney to write an essay about African American
hair in the 18th century and also a bit about the issue
of cultural appropriation. Cheyney. - When I first came to re-enacting I was told black women
wore what white women wore, but just dirtier. I was like, [Audience Member] I don't think so. Right. (crowd laughing) So, started my journey. I decided to do the research myself. There were a lot of people
out there doing that research. It was just in academic circles. So going out, I started my
journey and people started reaching out to me, sending
me images, portraiture. So I started also reading accounts. We get a lot of descriptions. For example, the description
of my headwrap here from the early 1770s was
from a white observer, observing two women coming
home from a church service. So I was able to kind of suss out, get this together from that description. We have accounts of African men and women just powdering their hair. Because they could achieve,
especially toward the hairstyles of the later 18th century. They are just molding
their hair into the form and then powdering it. Not always because that is cleaning it, but they're imitating the styles. I found that people who, enslaved persons that worked in the household, the enslavers had more control
over what they were wearing, whereas people who were
working out in the fields, it was more of a hands-off approach. - [Audience Member] How would they obtain, like the fabrics they
used to cover their hair? - Very good question. So there's really two ways. The first is an allotment. In both the 18th and 19th
century, enslavers are allotting a certain amount of cloth
for their enslaved to wear. Almost always in the 19th century. And then, enslaved
persons have side hustles. Sometimes it was, right, right? So in Williamsburg,
chickens were the enterprise of enslaved persons. So most likely, if you were in Virginia and you bought a chicken in a city center, most likely it was from
someone who was enslaved. Sometimes it was the
enslaver knew about it. Most of the time, it was a side hustle. So they bought this stuff themselves. So you'll see things like this. So what I'm wearing, this is
negro cloth, my petticoat. Then you see these beautiful
reproduction shoes. (crowd laughing) With, but my buckles are
actually brass and simply made. Then I have a silk headwrap on. (audience applauding)
- So you can see how the shape of the cushion
amplifies the pouf and how it shows it off. So when she's walking, you
can see it, you can enjoy it. She has plenty of height there as well. But what happens if she
needs to go outside? (audience chuckling) And it's raining? We created something
called a calash bonnet, based off originals. It is
(audience murmuring) it will fit, we know this. So you can make your own. (audience laughing) I'll tell you, if you
want to get a lot of looks in New York City, you wear one of these. Yeah, ask us how we know. But, so the calash bonnet
would go over top of it. You can see because it
is boned, it is rigid. It surrounds the hair, but
it does not crush the hair. So it protects the hair as well. These could actually come in oiled silk, which means they would be waterproof. So it could actually act as
protectant from the rain, which is amazing. But let me tell ya, if
you catch a strong breeze, like you're walking the
wrong direction down, yeah, oof. Like, it's not good. So you have the ribbon to hold it in place so that way you don't
accidentally choke yourself. (audience laughing) This is actually something that
you see in the 18th century all the way up through the 19th century. At that point they called them "uglies". (audience laughing) So, the pink is really
lovely because the pink actually is there to help
reflect light onto the face to help encourage that lovely glow, so that's why you see
a lot of things lined in rose or pink colored silks. You also can see things
lined in black silk because that acts as the
absorbent of the sun. So if it's sunny outside,
having something lined in black silk absorbs the sun, so it helps shade your eyes. But if, for some reason
you're in a darker place, white silk, if you feel like
getting blinded, white silk - There is a myth about lead-based makeup. Yes, some women wore white,
lead-based makeup on their faces just like some women
get Botox or some women wear different types of
creative implants today. Was it the norm? No. Was it known to be dangerous? Yes. It's written about in many
of the primary sources that we read, how bad lead
is to put on your face. So they knew about it at the time, it was not the norm. That leads into something really important that we did not discuss, which is makeup. - No, we didn't cover it. We're gonna give y'all
a very quick version. - Very, very quick. Obviously concealer, mascara,
heavy eyebrow pencils like we use today were not
the thing in the 18th century, but they were wearing a lot of rouge. Abby and I are both
wearing a lot of rouge. It's a beautiful liquid rouge. It looks good on everybody's skin type, and its base was brandy. So it smells good too and you
could have a little tipple if you want. - Don't do that. - They knew that was bad too. For eyebrows they would burn a clove and use the clove like an eyebrow pencil. They would color their lips with berries, different kinds of pigmented lip salves. But it was about the natural
beauty coming out of your skin. Leia, her skin is just luminous and part of that is because her hair has been powdered white. It changes the whole
look, look of the face. It gives a totally different appearance. And so darkening the eyebrows
and giving a lot of flush to the cheeks sort of grounds the face so you don't look washed out when your hair's powdered white. You have blonde hair, so if we were to pomade and powder your hair, we would need to darken
your eyebrows, your lips, and your cheeks just so
you aren't like, whew. - When you look at beauty books, and if you go through
curious, you can actually find a lot of these for free on Google Books. Toilet de Flora is one
of the most iconic ones. It was written, I think, about 1772, and it's a craft book for home. So you too can make
your own makeup at home. Have fun figuring out the proportions, because 18th century
cookbooks, not helpful. They're like, "A little bit of this, "and then some of that over there. "Then mix it up, pour it
in a pot, have a good time. "Ok, bye." And you're like, "Uh, what?" But most of those recipes
are actually skincare. So you have cold creams, you
have pomatums for the face, you have wrinkle removers,
you have acne removers, you have line smoothers,
you have supplements, you have different scents
and different types, you have hand creams. Then you have, like, rouge and lip salves. But it's really about
maintaining what you have and that inner beauty coming out. It ties in to what Cheyney was saying. The 18th century was, your
outside is a reflection of your inside. So you, as a woman, had to
walk this very fine line of looking put together,
neat, tidy, pretty, but you don't want to look gaudy. You don't want to look over the top, because that reflects poorly
on you as your inside. If you look like a hot
mess on the outside, people are gonna assume you're a hot mess. It's a different way of thinking. So Toilet de Flora, it
really addresses the idea of taking care of what you have. We really wanted to amplify
that and really stress that in the book because of the whole mythology around the white face and
the bright pink cheeks and the velvet mouches all over your face, and dah dah dah dah. But reality, look at the portraiture. It's very, very natural. It's very, very natural and
it's about what you already have and amplifying what you already have. Like Lauren was saying,
when we started pomading and powdering hair, what we discovered is, it makes your features pop
forward if you put the rouge on. Like, your eyebrows, you need to darken them just a little bit because all of a sudden, it
just makes your eyes the focus. It brings all the
attention here to the face. So just a little bit
of color, a little bit of eyebrow pencil, and all of
a sudden, it's all about this. How good this looks, right? So that's what it's about. Maintaining what you
have, take care of it, and amplify what you already have. (audience applauding)
(old fashioned jazzy music) - [Presenter] So I don't know about you, but I am mildly less intimidated
by 18th century hair now and might have to give
this a go at some point. It should be noted that this evening was part of the National Arts Club's Fashion Speak Friday series, which are free evening lectures on various fashion-related topics and
are open to the public. So if you are looking for
something posh and educational to do whilst you're in
the city on a Friday, I highly recommend checking it out. I'll put a link to that below, along with the full American Duchess guide to 18th century beauty, if you
care to investigate further into some fancy Georgian
hair and makeup things. Meanwhile, I think I
promised to make you a video about a dress, so I could
probably get back to that. Anon, friend. ♪ I've got a bonnet ♪ ♪ I've got a bonnet ♪ ♪ Hey, I've got a bonnet, hey ♪ (audience laughing) (screeching) - Find your light, Wellington.
I attended this demonstration at the National Arts Club in NYC and these ladies were absolutely fabulous! Seeing and hearing how dedicated and excited they were about 18th c hairstyles was truly inspiring!
Fascinating!!
i’m a 16 year old african american male and i find this really interesting.
I love American duchess and Bernadette Banner!!
I could watch this for hours! Fascinating.
that was very interesting
Bernadette Banner! I love how eloquently she speaks, like... I can’t think of a comparison
Not that I’m too lazy to google for more videos of this type, but does anyone have any suggestions for similar content? This is very interesting and I love their passion and laid back way of speaking.