Early Victorian Hairstyles

The way women styled their hair in the early Victorian era (1830's - 1850's) was mainly dependent on their social class. This is because those deemed low/working class citizens needed practical hairstyles that would allow them to complete the jobs they were required to do, such as be a maid/servant, without their hair getting in the way. Therefore as a result of this the majority of working class women had their hair tied back into plaits and buns most of the time while they were working. In the evenings the women may have styled their hair in order to seem appealing to their husbands such as having their hair in ringlets but unlike those wealthier than them they could afford the resources to create more extravagant looking styles.

In addition to the fact that wealthier women were able to afford better resources to help with styling their hair such as bonnets, flowers and other hair accessories to make the styles more appealing, these women also had more extravagant hairstyles due to their social lives. Wealthier citizens often attended large dinner parties, balls etc. Therefore they had more opportunity to dress up and experiment with various hairstyles.

Image taken from http://www.fashion-era.com/hair_hats_184070.htm

However, regardless of the difference in class, there were a number of elements that were common across all Victorian women's hairstyling. First of all it was extremely popular for women to have a parting directly down the centre of their head throughout the early Victorian era as it made the hair look neater and perfected. 

image taken from
http://individual.utoronto.ca/beaujot/web2/bib.html

In addition to this, despite the differences in the ways the hair was styled across different social classes, the factors that went in to creating the hairstyles were mainly based around plaits, buns and ringlets. The majority, if not all victorian hairstyles used either one or all of these elements. Various plaits were used to create different styles (fishtail plaits, standard plaits, french plaits etc.) sometimes the hair was plaited into a bun at the back of the head or hair was plaited along the sides of the head and into a bun at the back, curls were styled in various ways, sometimes the whole head was curled and then styled or other times women created a number of identical ringlets at the sides of their head - but the same ideas were used in styles across the classes. 

When it came to evening wear, upper class women often had the hair in curls piled up on the top of the head with maybe a few curls hanging out at the back down the neck, as well as including various colourful flowers, lace, ribbon etc to make the hair more exciting and encouraging them to be in competition with other women attending the event to be the most beautiful and extravagant out of them all.

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