Big Hair

Just thought I'd pop in and show you what I've been working on this week.

A group of us from my city are driving to St Louis to join the St. Louis Georgian Sewing Society for a francaise tea. That's a fancy tea party at the Ritz Carleton where we all wear our 18th century finery.

If you remember me posting pics of my 18th century "Marie Antoinette-style" dress, you'll remember that I had GIGANTIC hair. (No, really! It was freakin' huge!) When I cut my hair short, I used the inner wire support form to make a similar style wig. Well, that was very good for a stage presentations but very unwieldy for regular wear. So I decided to re-style the wig. I've spent the last week undoing, de-tangling and restyling it.

BTW - I used the book 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling by Kendra Van Cleave. I can't recommend it highly enough! I chose one of the designs from the late 1760s-early 1770s that was a medium height.

Here are the results -

Before

After

After

The Hips Don't Lie

So I'm finally able to get back to where I started with this blog - my competition costume for Costume-Con 31! I started to blog about the whole process, but then thought that I shouldn't reveal everything before the convention.

Now the convention is over, so here it is:

 

It's all hand-sewn using period techniques. I won best workmanship for the Journeyman category and an honorable mention for my documentation. Nothing for presentation, though. Phooey! (pout)

I guess I know what I have to work on now, huh? Although I did get a couple of really big laughs. I came out and started dancing to harpsichord music. After about 30 seconds, disco lights started flashing and Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" started playing & I boogied down. :-)

That's where the title of this post came from - it was the name of my entry in the competition.

I thought it was appropriate given the hoops. There were 2 other women in the competition with even bigger panniers, though.  Mme de Pompadour's gown was more elegant and Marie Antoinette's was more over-the-top, but I think my dress was prettier. (I even did the "pretty, pretty princess" dance the first time I put it on.)

And, hey.... check out the hair!!!:

 

 It took about 45 minutes to get my hair up in that style. Another lady in the competition (the Marie Antoinette) had a similar style. Hers was a wig, but it was even taller than mine! I was limited by the length of my hair, but I honestly don't think that I could have gotten it any higher by myself. I could have had longer hair, but my arms couldn't have reached any further. (grin)

Over the next several blog posts I'm going to detail the whole process of the costume from start to finish, so I'll talk more about how I did the hair later.

(BTW, the convention had a great photographer so I got a lot of good professional shots of most of the costumes that I took. Check him out at www.donsearlephoto.com.)

The Hedgehog Hypothesis

Based on the title of this post, I guess I’ve been watching too many episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Oh, who am I kidding? There’s no such thing as too much Big Bang Theory!

Anyway…on to the costuming.

To go with my curtain-along costume, I’ll be doing a hedgehog hairstyle. That’s the big, round, poofy hair in the pic I showed last time.

It’s basically a big afro with a ponytail hanging down the back. You make it by curling your hair in lots and lots of tiny curls and then teasing the heck out of it until it stands out like a dandelion fluffball.

Well, I have fairly curly hair anyway, so I wondered if I could get it to stand out without teasing. I used setting lotion & curled my hair in tiny perm rollers. After sleeping on it overnight, this is what I got:

You can’t tell from the pic, but I actually have long hair (just past my shoulders). The setting lotion REALLY worked!

So then I ran my fingers through it and threw on a fichu (scarf):

Wow! I might not even need to tease it!

I added a small extension down the back with a bow to see how it looks:

When I get around to doing it for real, I’ll run a comb through it to get it out further and make it more even. Then I’ll powder it. ‘Cause you don’t see many 18th century portraits of people sporting red hedgehogs, now do ya?