Hair History: 16th Century | Renaissance

Hey guys, welcome to hair history of the 16th century, also known as mid-renaissance. Now the beginning of this century was pretty much a continuation of the 15th century, so you would see a lot of ribbons, loads of braiding, soft waves, and especially hair that was braided and then kind of wrapped around the head as I showed you last week. And continuing throughout the 16th century, the most popular trend was the middle parting, with the hair going sleek downwards, and then being coiled around the head in some way. Pretty much the same as in the 15th century. But as we progressed later into the 16th century, a new fashion came up, and that was setting the hair around wire frames, or pads, or just filling, to make sure that the hair stands up in the most odd shades you can imagine. So what I'm wearing today is a pouf, a pretty simple pouf, and this was the most popular around Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, kind of the northern regions, because in the south, especially Italy, and a little bit of France, this sounds absolutely crazy, but women would wear wire frames, shaped like horns, that would stick up from their heads like that, and they would have wrapped it with hair, so that it looked like their hair was sticking up in horns like that, and then sometimes they would have a huge point of hair in the back, it was absolutely ridiculous. So I guess you could say we're stepping away from the very romantic, wavy, kind of feminine styles of the 15th century, and we are progressing into more and more extravagance, that kind of peaks with the huge, grey, heavy wigs, after a few centuries, we're not there quite yet, we are getting to that trend, with the bigger the hair, the better, it's a status symbol once again, the higher you're standing, the bigger your hair is supposed to be. Now again, this is becoming more and more noticeable now, is that there is a lot of freedom, you can do with your hair pretty much whatever you want, in the previous century, the 15th century, there was a very clear kind of trend of the middle parting, and the hair kind of sleeked back, but that is completely gone, and pretty much you can do anything you want. So again, it kind of depends on the region, and the decade, but yeah, fashion is just kind of varied, people would look to queens, the queen of England, queen of France, queen of Italy, or kind of nobles in Italy, to look at how they wanted to do their hair, and there wasn't really one major fashion, although I would say that the hair was pretty much always either parted down the center, or pulled back over some kind of poof, as I have it right now. One thing that is noticeable is the end of dark hair, blonde hair was just the most fashionable thing, it was considered very beautiful, and women would go through extreme lengths to dye their hair blonde. I have a little excerpt here from 1589, from Cesare Vecchielio, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, who describes how Venetian women would dye their hair blonde. The houses of Venice are commonly crowned with little constructions in wood, resembling a turd without a roof. It is in these that the Venetian women may be seen as often, and indeed oftener, than in their chambers. It is there that with their heads exposed to the full earth order of the sun during whole days, they strain every nerve to augment their charms, as if they needed it, as if the constant use of so many methods known to all did not expose their natural beauty to paths for no better than artificial. During the hours when the sun darts its most vertical and scorching rays, they repair to these boxes and condemn themselves to broil in them unattended. Sitting there, they keep on wetting their hair with a sponge dipped in some elixir of youth, prepared with their own hands or purchased. They moisten their hair afresh as fast as it is dried by the sun, and it is by the unceasing renewal of this operation that they become what you see them, blondes. When engaged in it, they throw over their ordinary dress a pinoir, or dressing gown of the finest white silk. They wear on their heads a straw hat without a crown, so that the hair drawn through the opening may be spread upon the borders. This hat, doing double duty as drawing line for the hair and a parasol to protect the neck and face, was called a solana. In winter, or when the sun faded, they wetted and dried their hair before a fire. So, you can imagine these ladies sitting on their rooftops with this kind of hats with no top, with their hair spread out over the rim of their heads, must have been amazing. But this was not very healthy, as you may know, exposing the top of your head to so much sunlight can cause several different diseases, and the manner of the potions they were putting on their hair didn't really help either, because they would add all kinds of poisonous ingredients to them that just weren't very good for the scalp. So now that we know a little bit about 16th century women, I would like to show you how to do this hairstyle. This is a mid-century French hairstyle, so let's jump into the tutorial. I'm going to start by dividing out a front section of my hair, this is going to make my pouf. And then I'm going to take a rolled up sock, this is what I use to make my sock buns, I have tutorials for it on my channel, but today I'm just going to use it to fill up a little bit of space on my head, to make my pouf a lot bigger. So I'm going to pin it to the top of my head, and I'm just going to stick my pin through the material, it's not that hard to do, just press. And then I'm going to tease that hair that I have to cover the sock, and tease it up big, you want this pouf to be huge, mine is actually only half, about half the height that it should be. So when that's teased, I'm going to flip it backwards and arrange it nicely around my sock, again trying to preserve as much of the height as possible. So I'm going to pin that down directly behind the sock. And then I'm going to coil up the rest of my ends into this little bun, and pin that down to my head as well. So then I'm going to turn around and I'm going to apply a few sets of extensions, hair extensions were still very much in use in this period, so I'm going to apply some as well. So when I have my extensions in, I'm going to divide my hair into two sections. So I'm going to start by gathering half of my hair at around the center of my head, and I'm going to braid this into a simple inleaf braid. Then I'm going to do the same thing on the other side. And now it's time to arrange my braids, so I'm going to pin them down to my head, and I'm going to first bring them forward towards my temples, and then back towards the center of my head again, or a little bit below that. And just pin that down with a hundred bobby pins. This is actually the century when bobby pins were invented, so it's okay to use them now. So again I'm going to do the same thing on the other side, and when both my braids are arranged, I'm going to tuck away the ends underneath each other and pin the ends down as well. And there is your mid-Renaissance hairstyle done! So I really hope you enjoyed this episode of Hair History, guys, give it a thumbs up if you did, I want to thank you so much for watching, and I will see you next week in the next episode. Bye!