Victorian hair styles have a reputation for being fussy and artificial – hair padded, curled, ratted, puffed and concealed under extremely elaborate hats. Indeed, for adult women a fashionable hair style could be as restrictive, time-consuming and unnatural as a fashionable outfit.
For children, however, Victorians made a number of concessions to comfort and practicality. Just as children’s clothing transitioned from being miniature adult clothing to more comfortable garments designed specifically for children, Victorian children’s hair styles were simpler than and distinct from adult hair styles.
Curls and Waves for Victorian Girls' Hair
Straight hair on females during the Victorian was a fashion no-no. Some girls were able to get away with braidwaves – the gentle waves caused by tightly braiding hair, leaving it overnight, then unbraiding it. Some photos also show that natural curly hair was permitted to remain in its natural state. Both of these methods were less time-consuming and uncomfortable for children than forcing them to endure nightly rag-curling.
Not all children were so lucky, however. Rag curls were necessary to produce the fat sausage curls (also called “drop curls” or “sugar curls”) often seen in children’s portraits. More rarely, girls had their hair crimped to achieve small, even waves.
Simple Victorian Children’s Hair Styles
Unlike the very elaborate, fussy hair styles worn by adult women during some decades of the Victorian era, children’s hairstyles were usually simple and could be surprisingly modern-looking. One popular style was a simple half-ponytail, in which the front hair was brushed off the face up to the crown and secured with a ribbon, while the remaining hair hung down freely. This look has become strongly associated with Alice from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (published in 1865), particularly when teamed with a headband or “Alice band”. This Victorian look differed from the modern half-ponytail only in that the hair was usually wavy or rag curled.
Other “modern” Victorian styles include centre-parted hair with two pigtails (often rag-curled), and centre-parted hair worn in two braids. These simple styles were not easily crushed, and could be worn with large or small hats. Large hairbows were a common accessory, as were headbands. Bangs were frequently worn, usually cut medium-thick and worn straight across the forehead.
Short hair was relatively uncommon for Victorian girls, unless it had been cropped during a fever. Waist- and hip-length hair was common, although there are also photographic examples of shorter hair (possibly due to earlier cropping).
Wearing hair up was reserved for young women, and Victorian girls looked forward to it as a coming-of-age signifier, along with lengthening their skirts. The late Victorian aesthetic movement featured women wearing flowing, romantic, pseudo-medieval hairstyles that were in fact more similar to the styles worn by Victorian children – half-ponytails or loose hair with headbands. However, popular fashion considered these styles grotesque and wild on adults.
Victorian Hairstyles for Boys
Boys typically wore their hair fairly short: either uniformly cropped all over the head, or worn a few inches longer on top with a side part. Less common was a pageboy-type bob, a “Little Lord Fauntleroy” look cut just above the shoulders, or left longer but curled into sausage curls. Very young boys, with long curled hair and dresses, can look very much like little girls in photographs of the period.
As photography became commonplace during the Victorian era, photographs are an excellent way to view children’s hair styles in formal and (more rarely) informal settings. The Flickr photo pool of Victorian children contains over 1600 photographs of infants and children sporting typical Victorian hair styles.
Sarah Tennant - Sarah Tennant is a onetime English major who lives in New Zealand with her husband and two small children. Her interests range from ...
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