Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Teased Hair Coming Back? You Kidding Me?

I read a newspaper article today that said teased hair is coming back into style. No, say it isn't so!  Been there, done that, as the saying goes. Back in the early 1960s, before long hair and short skirts, we wore our hair short and teased as high as we could possibly get it. Then we sprayed it stiff with hairspray! The natural look it was not.


Hair teased for volume


I'll admit the hairstyle in the picture that accompanied the article was rather nice, or at least I liked it (see below). The model's hair is long and pulled back into a sloppy chignon. The teasing was to make it stay in place. It was not smoothed over as we did it back then; the suggestion was to strive for the "messy" look.

Hair teased and pulled back into a chignon. You can read the article and see step-by-step instructions here

With the current popularity of "Mad Men," and the craze for vintage clothes and the retro look, I should have guessed that teased hair wouldn't be far behind.

I remember that mother said back when her older sisters were young that teased hair was in style (that would have been in the early 1900s or 1912-1917 or so).They called it "ratting" then and special little combs were made to accomplish the backcombing. Then in the 60s and it made a slight comeback in the 80s with film stars and glamour dolls.

Just proves what goes around eventually comes back around!



Me with my teased hair style in the 1960s. It actually pains me to look at this picture from my school yearbook!

What do you think of teased hair? Would you submit to that torture to achieve a fashionable hairstyle?


8 comments:

  1. My hair is naturally curly, so teasing or ratting would just be redundant. I remember my older brothers being sweet on girls with little bows clipped into the middle of their bangs after teasing them into a sort of circle. They would have loved your yearbook picture.
    The chignon is nice, but is it my imagination that her makeup seems pretty harsh? Soft hair style for balance, maybe?

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    1. Hi Beryl, and I remember those little bows; wore them too. Mother sewed our dresses and made a bow from the same fabric as the dress to clip into our hair! Yes, I believe the model is wearing heavy makeup.

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  2. Oh no. I have never " teased " my hair, and I doubt that I ever will. My daughter told me, that some of her age have done it for years already, moderately though.
    Your second picture shows a look, that might work for someone, but in general, I think that today there are other methods to get a " messy " look too.

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    1. Hi Mette, I saw your hair on your blog post today and your hair looks beautiful, so don't ever tease it! I find that standing in the wind provides a quite adequate "messy" look.

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  3. The second picture looks like my hair when I have just hopped out of bed & pulled back with a scrunchie!!

    Like Beryl have/had curly hair (after all the years of straightening it now
    seems to have lost its curls)weird!

    I was the typical sloan straight hair with the 'Alice' band,no back combing for moi. It seems to be popular with the younger girls. Ida

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    1. Ida, that does seem strange that the naturally curly hair has gone away after years of straightening. I like straight hair; gives a sleek, classic look.

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  4. Oh no - no teasing for me, its a wonder you and I have any hair at all now from all that teasing back in the 60's, spraying it with lacquer, then wrapping it in toliet tissue at night to hold the "do" AND sleeping on a satin pillow case. After several days of continued spraying, it was some kind of stiff. Mother always said we could have the biggest hair and more of the stiff slips we wore then - 5 or 6 starched as stiff as possible. Glad I'm too old for it this time.

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    1. Hi Sissy, ha-ha, had forgotten about the tissue wrap! And who can forget that we only washed our hair once a week, and went to the beauty salon for that! Now, if we don't wash our hair every single day we can't stand it!

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