15 thoughts on “Harlots: A Timeline in Hair

  1. Gotta wait for the DVD. But I’m hoping it will release soon. I don’t believe HULU is compatible with Cox Cable.

      1. He is quite the hottie too isn’t he? Plus I like how we can see his Incredibly Dark Eyebrows so it’s unlikely to be red hair powdered white.

  2. I’m loving it so far, particularity that they actually have the characters WEARING (SEMI) NICE CLOTHES AND BRIGHT COLOURS. It’s so refreshing to have such a wide range of colours, and acknowledging that prostitutes had to dress to stand out from the crowd. No browns or greys here.

    I was a bit annoyed at Lucy’s hair as well, but then I reasoned Margaret wanted to play up the ‘young virgin’ look, so eh. I would have liked it better if some of it had been tied back at her temples; that always looks lovely.

    I’m surprised at how relatively puffy Haxby’s hair is; wouldn’t a butler, which is what I assume he is, have a more sombre hairstyle?

  3. My immediate response when I saw Lucy was ‘Frock Flicks will be unimpressed’ glad to see I was right :)

  4. Thetre are 18th century paintings of ladies with visible wiglines. These tend to be unflattering paintings by mediocre painters, showing some middle-aged merchant’s wife, hanging in obscurity somewhere though. One exception to the “only technical mediocre painters in obscurity showing a middle-aged woman” would be the portrait of Dorothea Sophia Thiele by Anton Raphael Mengs though. That’s an obvious wigline, especially if you contrast it with the natural hairline in Mengs’ portrait of Caterina Regina Mingotti. And considering that you can see the Dorothea’s natural hair behind her ears, it’s very obvious that it was very much intentional to make her wig look like a wig.

    So while in this context of Harlots (and the wig-wearing woman needing to advertise her health and natural beauty) an obvious wigline makes little sense to me either, this “visible wiglines were only for men” doesn’t hold up as a general catch-all rule.

  5. I haven’t seen it yet. That being said, If love to see a tangential but interesting post on why 18th century women didn’t wear wigs! As well as maintenance of such elaborate hairstyles… I did read the one link you had that showed how quickly an 18th century look can be done from Colonial Williamsburg, but I’d love to see more of your thoughts. :)

  6. Not sure where to post this, but Kendra [and others]: if you haven’t seen it already, I thought you might get a kick out of the interviews with “Hair stylist Judy Crown” from the Archive of American Television. In particular, you can find a newly posted segment on YouTube called
    “Hair stylist Judy Crown on how hairstyling has changed” in which she talks during the first part of the video about how much better the British are at historical hairstyling for TV . :)

    1. Beauty patches were a thing in the 17th & 18th c- first worn by the Duchess of Portsmouth, I believe (a mistress of Charles II, you might know her by another name…) to hide smallpox scars- they were made of black silk or velvet – like fans & flowers later, they developed into a secret language; shapes (like stars, hearts, diamonds & crescents, as well as circles) & placements (left/ right, corner of mouth/ under eye), could mean all sorts of things- & was an interesting & fun shorthand… if you were in the know!

Comments are closed.