From Hair to Eternity
by Kristin Marino
Quinstreet.com

The rich and famous have merged hair, fashion, and art since...well, since they've grown hair and worn clothes. It's a sure bet that Adam's and Eve's silky locks and perfectly coordinated fig leaves weren't just happy mistakes.

Have we learned anything from our distinguished hair history? Floppy ponytails, filthy hair, flapping skirts, and naughty words on T-shirts have become almost mandatory anti-fashion statements for the glitterati. And this voluntary hiatus of good hair and fashion is beginning to trickle down to the rest of us. Are we destined to suffer a bad-hair century, or can we take some lessons from the heads that came before us?


Hair Like an Egyptian
Even the Egyptians, who surely didn't expect to show up on the cover of the latest stone tabloid, went to great lengths to be fabulous. One look at surviving Egyptian art reveals just how much effort went into hair and fashion. Women wove ribbons into their hair and placed spirals of gold in their locks.

Wigs elevated hair (literally) to an art form with fantastic sculptures for the head. As it happens, they also served a practical purpose, helping keep the lice away from the scalp. Hair extensions were also a must for the ancient Egyptian fashionista. Cleopatra sports this style in surviving Egyptian art, and it's not too hard to imagine Beyoncé slinking around with this look in her next video.

To Dye For
Our red-headed divas could take a cue from Queen Elizabeth I who, during her time, guided both hair and clothing fashion with her outrageous updo and gargantuan collars. Women of Elizabethan times were so desperate to imitate her curly red hair that they tried just about anything to achieve the look, including applying urine to their hair.

They rolled their red tresses onto a heart-shaped frame and shaved their foreheads to imitate Queen Elizabeth's striking style. Maybe it's time for Lindsay Lohan to ditch the blond and go back to the sultry auburn that made her famous. Shaved forehead optional.
What a Bird's Nest
By the 18th century, wigs were the hot accessory in England and France. An English partygoer might show up to an event three feet taller than normal thanks to a carnival float of hair on his or her head. Wig makers truly were artists of the era. Wigs were modeled over a cage frame using horse hair and copious amounts of powder. Hairstylists planted flowers and figurines in the wig, creating elaborate hair dioramas. Gardens, birds in a birdcage, even a maritime scene complete with attacking battleship--this was hair art without boundaries. Madonna was close to this when she went through her baroque phase, but then she found Kabbalah and Chanel.

Hair Today, Art Tomorrow
Even in times when hair and fashion weren't quite so artistic or outlandish, creative types found alternative ways to achieve artistic expression through hair. For Victorians, "hair art" meant fashioning elaborate brooches, pendants, rings, and even framed wall-hangings from the locks of their beloved, sometimes dearly-departed ones. Instead of wearing vials of each other's blood around their necks, Billy Bob and Angelina might have worn a lock of each other's hair.
20th-Century Locks
In many parts of the world, including the United States, braiding is a high art that is practiced by hair artisans. African knots, or Zulu knots as they are commonly known in the United States, are sometimes called chicken poo-poo in Liberia, presumably for their shape. To make Zulu knots, divide the hair into even rectangular or triangular sections all over the head. Then twist the hair in each section together and wind into protruding knots.

Weave Some Magic
In the 21st century, aside from an occasional splash of red or pink from Kelly Osborne or a bunch of stringy black hair extensions from Christina Aguilera, our beloved divas are playing it safe. When they don't look as if they've been dragged through a hedge backwards, that is. Cher's once-outlandish wigs are now mostly chic and pretty close to hair colors found in nature.

Hair Do We Go from Here?
If life imitates art and art imitates life, are we destined to sloppy, boring, frumpy, and frowzy art? Sagging peasant skirts; unwashed, pinned-up hair; message T-shirts …

Where are artists the likes of José Eber, Coco Chanel, and Bob Mackie? What has become of the mavericks of clothing and hair design? Where's the cutting edge? Where's the art?

It's going to take a forward-thinking, artistic soul to breathe life into our hair, design, and art. Who wouldn't like to see Angelina Jolie sport a black widow hairdo or Jessica Simpson show up on stage with something besides cascading golden locks--perhaps a spiderweb or a head full of flowers? We don't have an eternity to make a spectacle of ourselves, but we do have our hair. Do you have what it takes to lead the vanguard in a new era of hair as art--for art's sake?

If you have a passion for art in its many forms, you could turn your passion into your career.

Thanks for posting that, BB! The part about using urine was, um, interesting. >_<

That was such a fun read.

I really want to do one of those wild and crazy Egyptian parties ...g

That was neat BB!  Funny thing is I read this after posting about having birds in hair myself!  LOL!

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You'd have to keep the oil handy to keep the wheel from squeeking all the time - hmmm, shall we us jojoba, coconut or olive oil??