Victorian hair research- Estella inspired

I based a lot of my research in Pinterest because it's a great database for images related to this project and others. When researching for hairstyles from the Victorian era I needed to be age specific because there was quite a difference between the hairstyle of a young/adolescent and an older woman in the Victorian period.

Having read Great Expectations and watched several programmes and films based on the novel I straight away noticed the difference in hairstyles between the women. If you look at Estella when she is young her hair is either completely loose or half up, half down. Then as she grows older you see her that her hairstyles slowly become more up-dos. The common factor with all the hairstyles is that they were curly.

During the Victorian period if a woman didn't have naturally curly hair she would tie pieces of her hair in rags and sleep in them overnight so that by the time they had woken up they would have curly hair. It was seen as a more professional or suitable to have your hair up as an older woman. This was so you could carry out more chores or a job with your hair out of your face. It also seems that the tighter the hairstyle the more uptight or strict a woman's lifestyle was.

These two images were the main inspiration for my Estella look because the hair is very intricate and curly/wavey of course. My favourite part of these hairstyles is the fact that they involve a piece of hair that wraps through the middle of the head, which divides the hairstyle up and gives it more layers.

The more wealthy a family was during the Victorian period the more intricate the hair would be, maybe with added accessories such as pearls or flowers. From looking at these images I knew the next step would be trying to break the hairstyles down and working out how to create them.