always) curled.

As the century progressed, slightly more elaborate and fake hair became more popular. Whereas in the earlier parts of the century, where women’s hair was almost always natural, the popularity for men wearing wigs in France began to spread to England and women. Hair began to be puffed out more, and a central parting was popular. Hair would be powdered using flour or starch, and white hair became very popular; this was because white wigs were the most expensive ones, so you would powder your own hair or wigs to make them look as white (and therefore as expensive) as possible. Other colours were popular, however, including more natural browns and greys, or more exciting pinks, violets, and blues. This is, in fact, where the term “powderand prevalent lice, was that the hair would start to get extremely smelly. As a result, the hair would have to be regularly perfumed to mask the smell.

A man having his hair powdered by a barber, from a print after Carle Vermat, c1700.

One unimpressed observer wrote the following scathing review of these hairstyles:

“Those piles of decorated, perfumed, reeking mess, by which a lady could show her fancy for the navy by balancing a straw ship on her head; for sport, by showing a coach, for gardening, by a regular garden on flowers. Heads which were only dressed, perhaps, once in three weeks, and were re-scented because it was necessary. Monstrous gatherers of horse-hair, hemp-wool and powder, laid on in a paste, the cleaning of which is too awful