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IN the present day we are all-too-used, to the point of ennui, to observing the latest in extreme and wacky fashion-driven hairstyles. But the late 20th and early 21st centuries don’t hold origin rights on ludicrous and weird haircuts by any means! If we were to time-tunnel ourselves back to the 17th and 18th centuries, we’d readily happen upon wondrously strange and absurd hairstyles that would not be out of place alongside the current crop of way-out styles. The popinjays, fops and dandies of the 1600s and especially the 1700s society prefigured contemporary times with their own brand of crazy coiffure in their day.
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| Fontange, a tower of intertwined curls with supporting scaffolding (Source: www.institutdugrenat.com) |
Fontange: for women the fashion de jour was the fontange…at its height—literally and figuratively—this was a “a high tower of curls piled over a wire foundation, sometimes with false curls” (‘Fontange’, www.encyclopaedia..com.), a sort of proto-beehive – Madge Simpson eat your animated heart out!. The combined hairstyle and headdress Fontange has been described as “the hipster of the 1700s” and “pre-cool” (‘Every Day Was Wacky Hair Day in the 1700s’, 19-Feb-2018, www.dictionary.com.)
Macaroni: Standard coiffure for 1700s upper middle-class gents was the periwig (a curly, often powdered※, wig worn by everyone from Louis XIII, it’s originator, to George Washington), but for the über-outrageous 18th century man-about-town nothing beat the Macaroni. Among Georgian Englishmen the Macaroni was more than a hairstyle, amounting to “a subculture of worldliness, superior style, sophistication and enlightenment”, it’s adherents were a sort of ur-dandy (‘The Macaroni Club: Fashion History’s Forgotten Drag Subculture?’, Cecile Paul, Cabinet of Chic Curiosities, 28-Oct-2021, www.messynessychic.com). The name for the hairstyle (and the wearer) is derived from the Italian pasta, although it’s coiffure doesn’t resemble tubes of pasta, rather looking more like the individual has a giant insect extending upward from his head! Unsurprisingly the Macaroni hairstyle was so “out there” it exposed the wearer to serious lampooning, resulting in a short-lived and limited fashion craze.
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| Macaroni coiffure: the little peaked hat on its apex only accentuates it’s utter ludicrousness |
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※ powdered wigs were known as perukes
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