- Hello, if you've been
following my channel for a while, then you're probably very well aware that I love historical hairstyles
and have for a long time. It's really fun to try them out but I've gotta say it took me
an embarrassingly long time to realize that hair ties,
rubber bands, elastics, like this, were not a thing
for historical hairstyles. Now, yes, if you would ask me point blank, did the medieval people use rubber bands? No, of course not, rubber
bands weren't really a thing until the 20th century. But being the modern person that I am, I use them whether I'm
going to just plain old work or to a historical event. That's what I knew, so that's what I used. But about two years ago or
so, I can't say for sure I didn't exactly mark
the date on the calendar for when I was gonna start
using historical hairstyles, but I know it's been at least a year because of the video that I
did with Rachel and Bernadette. - Curling's really hard. What happens when your hair is
longer than your arm though? - See, my hairstyle is easy (chuckles). - Is it (chuckles)? - I've had a goodly amount
of time to experiment with what styles work well for
me, my hair and my lifestyle, and without further ado let's
just go ahead and get started. So I do wanna start out with a classic, which is Elizabethan Hairtaping. I need a brush, success. So hairtaping is something
that you see in portraiture and statues and little miniatures. This is definitely the method
that I was familiar with first and had some success with and I'll kind of explain why shortly here. But you're gonna start off by putting your hair into two braids. If you have shorter hair
then you might wanna start it like kind of right behind the ear in order to have more braid
to put over top of your head. One braid, for right now we're just gonna leave the ends like so. Once you're nicely braided
up, you are going to, again, if you have shorter hair you're gonna want to put your
two braids just straight up, so that they can overlap
somewhere in the middle up here. I can go ahead and go around
the back and then up and over and for right now, I mean you would, to some extent want to try
and tuck the ends underneath but it is tricky to do too much of that when things aren't tied down yet. This is where using
things like flax seed gel might come in handy. I read about it in one of the issues of "Compleat Anachronist"
and it's a cool thing that I have not really
done much experimenting with myself yet, someday though. But once you've got your
braids mostly in place, and keep holding onto them for now, you're going to take a big blunt needle with a ribbon about two yards or so and we are just, oh, this has
already started coming undone. (sighs) Okay, and we're
just gonna start sowing the braid, try and hold
everything in place. Once you've gotten a few stitches in you'll have to be less particular
about holding it in place. I'm just gonna leave
that there for a second, and we're gonna try and do this side. I'm gonna retuck it
under, thread my ribbon. Part of the trick here is
definitely trying to make sure that you don't accidentally
catch your own tail, and then you would tie the ribbons. Now, my problem with this method is, one, it tends to be a little bit messier. I find it difficult to
do this without using any sort of additional material, whether that's a rubber band or using like additional
threads to like tie up the ends of your braids first and then
do the hairtaping part of it. It's also a little bit difficult
to get the bands of ribbon that are visible to be
very like even and neat. It's helpful if you have
somebody else doing it on your head, but that's
not always possible. All in all not bad
because you're sewing it to your scalp hair, it's
pretty hard for it to fall off. So it is, once you have it
looking how you want it, a nice like all day hairstyle. So that's kinda cool. I just found it fiddly enough
that I would pretty much only ever do this for events
and never like for funsies. It's just annoying enough
that I ended up not using it. So while that does work
for some of the hairstyles that you see in portraiture, I, I kept seeing these
paintings where the ribbon that was used to tie up the
hair was clearly going along the individual braids rather than with the two braids together. And I kept wondering like, why? If this hairtaping with a
needle is how they did do it, I don't know, something about this just
doesn't quite make sense. And, you know, I was definitely
having a bit of trouble with that and I did some experimenting. So I did try to see if
I could wrap the ribbon around my hair, but I kept
having trouble and I'll show you. Personally, whenever I
do my hair in this style or any of these styles
I usually like to twist the front part of my hair. I feel like it makes the hair
sturdier throughout the day. You get less like wispies
falling out as the day goes on, and I also think that if you
are doing any sort of taping or pinning or whatever, the hair going in two
different directions to you, kind of like in a V
formation, gives your pins or your hairtaping something to grab onto just a little bit better
than the plain old hair going all the way down smoothly look. Twisty on this side too. I just realized the back of my head is probably not even at
all (sighs), that's fine. So taking it about in the
middle and putting that midway kinda behind your neck,
hold on to one side, until (laughs) you've twisted it enough that you're not really
gonna pull the other half. So my problem was though that
once I got towards the end, I didn't really know how
to secure this ribbon end so that it would stay in place. You know, I tried kind
of tying a little knot into the end and seeing
if that would stay, but this will get
progressively looser and looser because it's not, it's
not really well anchored. Obviously it helps once
you've got both sides done, so let me do that really
quick here and I'll put it up. Okay, so now I have my
prewrapped hair braids and okay I guess, next step
would be to wrap them around. So like in the portraiture you have the two separately
wrapped braid look. I should have put the ribbon
a little bit more often so that you get more of the
ribbon visible, but what now? How do I get this to stay
up once I let go of my hand? There are some pins that have been found, especially like U pins and straight pins, and I've mentioned those in past videos particularly the straight pins, but there are so many images
of women in a state of undress or getting dressed, it really
feels like it's just ribbon. So I thought, okay, I think,
I think I have an idea because in some of them
you can see extra bands of ribbon visible in front. So I'm like, okay, maybe what
I need here is a longer braid. Also, this is another thing
that I hate about this, if you take down the braids the, the twist is gonna slide down. My ribbon has started
falling off and it's not, it's, it's not a great
style for being able to like repin it back up because it just, it gets
so messy and unwieldy. Here are my longer ribbons. I, this is just under four yards but I don't think of it that way. I think of it as I put
it on top of my head, and the ends of the strings
are both lying on the floor. I can definitely get away
with shorter of course, but I have found this to be a length that works really, really well with me. So I've discovered, the problem with that
previous twisty, twisty style, and I it over and over
again trying to make it work and it was just so frustrating
that it didn't wanna do. What you need to do is you
need to anchor both ends. So we're gonna do that on the top. You can use the needle or
you can just kind of like put the ribbon on your
hand, kind of like so, and then grab a chunk of hair and just kinda gently pierce through it. Once I have it kind of a
little headband up here, I check by looking at the
floor that my two ribbons are approximately even. Okay, looks good. And then hold onto one, there we go. I'm just kind of doing
this quickly for you guys 'cause I don't want it
to take too terribly long worrying about getting it all perfect. But whenever I'm doing
it as a day to day style, and you may have noticed
over the past probably six months or so I've been
doing this style a lot because I really, really like it. What I'll do is, in front of the mirror, I'll check that there's two
hair bumps in between each of the, the wraps and that
helps give it a very even look. Once I get to the end what
I'll do is I'll anchor it in rather than just simply tying a knot and hoping that it stays, 'cause it won't. What I will do is I will
simply undo my braid, and then I just go ahead
and braid it back up again with the ribbon integrated
as part of that braid. Just a couple inches is plenty
to help lock in the ribbon with the end of the hair. I wrap it around and tie a knot, boop. And now this is pretty dang sturdy. I have pretty much zero
issues with this falling or like working its way out through the day which is fantastic. And now I don't have to worry
about the top of my spirals trying to slide down
because it's locked in with this hair band and
I don't have to worry about the bottom slipping off. So what I can do now, and this is, this is the part that I'm
almost even more excited about than the sturdy wrapping. Take it and wrap it around,
again if you have short hair you might just go straight over top. In my case, I like to go around the bottom and then over top, now
you can see that this side is gonna go behind my ear
and in front of the braid. This side is on the other, other
side of the, the big braid. I'm just going to loop it
underneath so that the end, you can now see it here, is behind my ear. Now, if you wanna get really particular, you can kind of like make
sure that the new string is covering up the
little ends of the braid that are under here. Honestly, I don't bother, I
just go ahead and do the wrap, like so, tie a knot in
the back or not, a bow. And usually the braid ends
just tuck themselves in. If they don't though, you can
kind of carefully poke, poke, poke underneath your braid,
then neat, beautiful. This is a little bit more far
forward than I usually go for. I usually go a little further back, sometimes I'll kind of
pull the forward, forward, the forehead hair forward so that it is just a little bit more loose and, I don't know, it's
less tight looking. I feel like having a little bit of looseness right here looks nice. So even better if you've
got bangs or like fringe that you can take out. I have a bit of fringe that
sometimes I'll pull out in order just to help
soften the whole look, which I think is super cute but that is what she looks like, and I have been so happy with this. It's become maybe not my everyday style but like at least every other
day style, I'm a big, big fan. I really like taking these
wispies and curling them. So like I've got cute little
curly wispies which is fun. I've been really, really happy with it. As it's staying power, I could 100% see someone 500 years ago, whether they're working the fields or doing other like daily
tasks throughout the day, this stays, it's beautifully neat. The way that these ribbons
form kind of like a little V going down the, the braid is
looks just like the images. I'm so happy with it. You don't have to mess with
it, it doesn't get messy. You can do it by yourself super easily. If you do late medieval through to like 16th century hairstyles, I think taking this and
modifying it to be more correct like with a center part
instead of a side part, and, you know, if you wanna
add a little tiny twist that you sometimes see in
16th century, you can do that. That, it's really the main
reason I made this video is 'cause I wanted to share that, I think this works
beautifully and I'm so, so so excited about it. So I wanted to get it
out of the way and share why I love it so much,
also it's kinda cute. Sometimes I'll wear this as the
next day style for this one. If like I didn't take it down that night, the next day I'll just flop
these down and be like, good enough, this is my
hairstyle today (laughs). But let's take this down, I wanna show you a few more things. Like, let's say you want to go to work, you want something just
a little bit more sedate, I feel you, I understand. Pins doesn't hurt, like if you really want the extra security to keep
the braids from going off the back of your head, you
can toss in a U pin like this and put it on the back of the two braids, it's like one on the side and
then a second one on this side and that'll be extra, extra, extra firm. So I kind of meant to do this
video in chronological order, from like what I first
understood hairtaping to be and how to use ribbon to tie up your hair, to like little advances I had made and then the resulting hairstyle
that I just showed you. But apparently I was just
too excited and I had, I had to show you that because I love that I had one understanding
of what hairtaping was and through experimentation
and looking at images, I found a, I think, very plausible version of what hairtaping is or could have been, no definitive statements here. But here's another thing
that I will do sometimes, just go ahead and braid the
ribbon in with your hair. If you're wanting a more subtle look for like an everyday
hairstyle, this is nice. And from what I can
tell a period hairstyle, there's at least one image
that I can think of where you, if you look really
closely at a woman's hair it looks like she has some
sort of green ribbon braided in with her hair. There's another one with
that, that (chuckles) over headband ribbon thing,
I think it's a black ribbon, and it's over top, and then there's a braid
and then mysteriously the ribbon just kind of appears again at the end of the braid. That's basically the
exact style I'm doing now. Now, as you get further or down the ribbon does become more visible, so if you want like extra, extra subtle go with a ribbon color that's
gonna match your hair color a little bit better. So I'm gonna braid the other side. If you have a ribbon, that's
only, let's say this long, this absolutely works beautifully as a just leave it down hairstyle, otherwise you can do
exactly the same as before. Loop them up, cross over the head. Now you don't have to actually
have all this extra string. If you want, you can totally tie, make it much shorter than this, right? And tie it at the back of your head. I like having it long
because I enjoy that, that kind of little
emphasis headband thing. So I actually have quite
a bit of extra here. Normally I will just
leave it, I don't bother, but if I want to I can
kind of tuck it underneath. That feels kind of right. Use a mirror to verify of course. So if it, if it looks bad,
just pretend it looks perfect, 'cause normally I would use
a mirror to double-check. If you are doing the style
where you only have enough hair so that you overlap it over top, and you don't have enough to
have that band in the back, then I actually would
go ahead and end your, your braid up here, your ribbons up here because that's where your hair is that you can hide the bow and knot under. So, let's say you don't have
a big old piece of ribbon just lying around to
do this hairstyle with but you have some shorter
bits of ribbon, like so, you can take these and just tie
the very ends of your braid. So what you'll do is you
will find the halfway point on your ribbon, try and line
up the ends of your hair and the ribbon, approximately ish. Unbraid it to that point, so
you're just going to add it in to two of the three strands of your braid and then keep braiding like normal. I do believe I've shown
this particular style a couple of times, I feel like I have, so forgive me if this is
a repeat for some of you. But this was one of the things that I was doing a lot
earlier on, and I think, think is in fact exactly what I did for the "Rachel and Bernadette
Video" from a year ago, which was, I was tying up the
ends of my braid using string or a very thin ribbon. So once I have it near the end, you know, just a couple inches left,
I take one of the two and wrap it around
about three times or so. Take the other one and wrap
it the opposite direction, again about three times
and then tie the two of them together into
a single simple knot. Now let's say you kind of wanna
combine the previous method and this one, you wanna be
able to use two ribbons. You're not, maybe you're not
digging the headband look, I don't know, but you still
want that extra length of ribbon in order to use
it to tie up your braid. So what you can do is this, take a moderate length of ribbon. Let's, a little over two feet maybe and then what you're gonna do is you're going to match
a short end of the braid to the hair, like so, and leave the other end long
and then go ahead and braid it just like we did a second ago,
braid, braid, braid, braid. And because we've locked
in the loop of the braid into the hair, this is nice and sturdy. There we go, so now I've
got a pair of long braids. I realize that these styles
might not be very useful to anybody who isn't down with just like daily crown braid looks. I like to try and make the
bow kind of a cute size, not too big, not too small, and then if the ends here are too long I try not to trim them in
place because I like to reuse the same ribbons over and
over and over and over, and if I keep like
retrimming them every time they're just a little bit
too long or something, very quickly I'm gonna
end up with a whole bunch of really short ribbons. So what I'll just do is take
the end and tuck it underneath so that for the most part,
it's just the loop part. The green is kinda cute
with my pink (chuckles). If you are not much of a
double braid fan that is fair, I still have some suggestions for you. While I work on getting
this untied and rebraided, let me talk to you a little bit about the sponsor of today's
video "June's Journey". Whenever I'm not conducting
years long hair experiments, or making vaguely historical ish things, I'm often playing games. Whether it's board games
in the before times, RPGs, or a lot lately, video games. It is just such a pretty game, it's a hidden object mystery game. So you have these gorgeous scenes and you're hunting for items in the scene, and it's just such a good chill game. I'm a big fan, especially
whenever you wake up at 6:00 AM to feed and let your dogs
out and then you're awake but you don't actually
wanna be up for the day yet, so you go back to bed and
hang out in the warm blankets. It's a great time (chuckles)
to hang out in bed, warm and cuddly and play "June's Journey" helping June solve
mysteries by finding clues and you also get a super cute
little island to decorate, which it's such a sweet little game and you can even play with friends. So, it's got just a
little bit of everything. It's free to download, you
can play on Android or iOS, whatever suits your fancy. You should definitely
give it a try by clicking on my link down below in the
description and have fun. It's just a very sweet, sweet game. All right, so if you
don't like double braids then you might consider the single braid, the more mature sister
of the double braid. Before I get to the end I'm gonna go ahead and do some prezhuzhing,
what's the word I? I don't know what to call this, this motion of like loosening your hair so it's not quite so slicked back looking. Here's a very lovely little silk ribbon, so I'm gonna go ahead and add it in. So when I do a single braid like this that I'm just going to leave down, what I like to do is leave
kind of an extra full tail at the end rather than going
all the way to the very ends. Again, wrap one around,
let's just do twice, wrap the other one the
opposite direction twice, and then we're going to tie a little bow and this is super cute, just is a very decorative way
to add ribbon to your hair. I think it's super sweet. You don't see a lot of single braids in the Late Medieval Renaissance Periods, but there are some. It does exist, it's just not
as common as the double braids. Lastly, I know some of you out there are probably thinking like do you really braid your
hair every single day? I do not, some days I
admit I'm lazy and I just, I leave it down. Sometimes that's the vibe I'm into. There are also plenty of
days where I want my hair up and out of the way and I'm just not gonna
deal with braiding it. That's where buns are fantastic. So I'm a very big fan of
the simple cinnamon bun. You just wrap it around like so and then it use a hair
stick or a few pins, whatever your preferred style is, and your hair is up and
done and out of the way in less than a minute. My lovely darling husband has
made me a bunch of hair sticks 'cause he does woodturning, but you can also find
them online like Etsy. There's tons of hand maker people that have done awesome hair tools, toys, things to put in your hair. You could also go for things like this. It's a little hair comb fork thing. I believe I got this on
Amazon for just a few Dollars. It's aluminum, it's super light
and similarly you can dig it into your bun and use it to hold the hair. These are nice and secure,
I like these a lot. So that pretty much covers a lot of the elasticless hairstyles
that I typically do and kind of a little bit of
my journey from figuring out, I see a thing and I wanna replicate it and not having a lot of success, to eventually what I
figured out were the ways to make it as successful
as possible for me, and I'm, I'm excited. There's a lot of styles that I'm still really looking
forward to experimenting with, see what, what I can make work or not. I hope you guys will have fun joining me when I get to them. A few last parting thoughts
before I let you guys go. I really enjoyed this
past year or two or three. It's been a while I'm not
sure, of elasticless styles. Now that said, of course
I still have hair ties. I don't use 'em very often but I have them just in case I need them. I do want to say that if anybody wants to continue doing like
historical styles using elastics because that's what worked for them, absolutely keep doing that. Use whatever works for you and, you know, makes it so that you can achieve the look that you're happy with. This is absolutely not
meant to be a video to say no one should use elastics. Always use what works for you. Kind of in the same vein, if you see other people's
videos, blogs, posts or whatever about historical hairstyles, please don't comment on them saying that they should try it
without using elastics because Morgan said so
because no (laughs). That is, that is absolutely
not the intent of this video. This is just me having
fun, trying things out and seeing what works
well for me and hoping that some other people
might appreciate that. That said, if you do end up wanting to try some elasticless hairstyles
and show them off online, a good hashtag from what I can
tell would be #elasticless. It seems like it's not really in use and might be a good way for us to share what each of us have found works
best on our own hairstyles. I find that anytime
somebody else tries a thing they're gonna put their own spin on it and find slightly different
variances that work better for them, their hairstyle, their ribbon, their what have you. And I'm excited to see
what you guys come up with. So thank you so much for watching. I hope you have an awesome day. (soft music) Hello from editing Morgan,
rocking the bun today, I was so excited to share
the hair things with you that I didn't even get
to some of the really, really cool folks who have
done some really neat work in the field of historical hair. Like of course, Janet Stevens
has been a huge influence into how I think about
hair and so many others. So I'm gonna try and
link to a bunch below, check them out if this is
something that interests you.
