1920s Hairstyles
For centuries, long hair had been considered the natural, proper, and beautiful state for a woman. Cutting one’s hair short was seen as shocking, even scandalous. So what changed in the 1920s?
Several things happened at once. The war years had made short hair practical for women working in factories and hospitals. New social freedoms meant that women were going out more. The rise of cinema gave everyone a window into the glamorous lives of film stars, who influenced fashion on a massive scale. And a new generation of women simply refused to be told what to do.
Hairdressing salons, which had mostly served men, began opening their doors to women. New products appeared on the market: setting lotions, brilliantine, and the first commercial permanent wave machines. Fashion magazines brought the latest hairstyles to women everywhere.
The Bob
It all started with the bob, and no hairstyle defines the 1920s like the bob. Short, sleek, and modern, the bob was the decade’s signature look. The style said, loudly and clearly, that a new era had arrived. Today we might think of it as just a haircut, but in its time, the bob was a cultural phenomenon.
The classic 1920s bob was cut straight across just below the ear, with the back often cut even shorter. The hair was worn smooth and flat against the head, sometimes tucked behind the ears, sometimes with a deep side part. It was clean, precise, and unlike any haircut that had come before.
The bob didn’t appear from nowhere. It is often credited to a hairdresser named Antoine de Paris, who cut the hair of the French dancer Caryathis in a short style sometime around 1909. But it was in the 1920s that the bob truly took hold of the public imagination.
The reasons why the bob was so popular are numerous. Practically speaking, it was easy to care for. Women who had spent their lives wrestling with long hair suddenly found that a simple bob needed little more than a comb and perhaps a dab of hair cream.
The bob was also suited to the fashions of the era. The dropped-waist dresses and straight silhouettes of the twenties looked much better with a short, neat head of hair than with long hairstyles or updos.
Emotionally and symbolically, the bob was even more powerful. For many women, cutting their hair off was an act of liberation. Newspapers reported on the trend with a mixture of alarm and fascination. Some employers refused to hire women with bobbed hair. Some husbands threatened divorce. And yet the bob kept spreading, because the women who wore it loved it.
The Shingle Bob
As the decade progressed, the bob evolved into something even more dramatic: the shingle bob. Where the classic bob was cut straight across all around, the shingle was tapered at the back, with the sides coming forward in points toward the cheeks. The overall effect was sharp and chic.
The shingle bob became popular around 1923 and remained fashionable for the rest of the decade. It required more skill from the hairdresser than a simple bob, because the tapering at the back had to be precise to achieve the right effect. Women who wore this hairstyle were often seen as especially fashion-forward.
One of the key features of the shingle bob was the way it hugged the head. Because it was cut so short at the back, it emphasized the shape of the skull, which was considered very fashionable.
Finger Waves
If the bob was the democratic haircut of the 1920s - worn by working girls and socialites alike - then finger waves were its most glamorous expression. Finger waves were sculpted, S-shaped waves pressed into short hair, creating a rippling effect. They gave even the shortest hair softness and femininity.
The technique for creating finger waves was both simple in concept and demanding in practice. A hairdresser - or a skilled woman at home - would apply a setting lotion to damp hair and then use a comb and her fingers to push the hair into S-curves, holding each wave in place while it dried. The result was a smooth, sculpted surface of waves that held their shape for hours.
Finger waves became enormously popular partly because they worked so beautifully with the fashions of the time. The evening wear of the 1920s was all about glitter and glamour, and finger waves provided the perfect backdrop.
Marcel Waves
Related to the finger wave, but created differently, was the Marcel wave. Named after French hairdresser Marcel Grateau, Marcel waves were created using special irons with a curved shape. The irons were heated, pressed into sections of the hair, and twisted in a specific way to create deep, even waves.
Marcel waves were particularly popular in the early part of the decade and remained fashionable throughout. They were slightly deeper and more defined than finger waves. For women with longer hair, Marcel waves were a way to update their look and achieve a modern appearance without cutting their hair off.
The technique required a skilled pair of hands and a good eye for symmetry, and a well-done Marcel wave was a mark of an excellent hairdresser. Many women who could afford it visited their hair salon regularly to have their waves re-set, since the style would loosen over time.
If the bob raised eyebrows, the Eton crop absolutely stopped traffic. Named after the famous English boys’ school whose students wore a similar style, the Eton crop was extremely short all over the head. It was very short at the back and sides, with slightly more length on top, often slicked flat or swept to one side with oil or brilliantine. It was a masculine style worn by women, and it was the most radical of all the decade’s hairstyles.
The Eton crop emerged in the mid-to-late 1920s and was favored by women who wanted to make the boldest possible statement about their independence and modernity. It was popular in artistic and intellectual circles and was associated with the avant-garde world of artists, writers, and free thinkers.
Why would a woman choose to look so dramatically short-haired in an era when even the bob was considered shocking? For some, it was purely aesthetic because they loved the look of the style. For others, the Eton crop was a deliberate challenge to conventional femininity. It said: I will not perform femininity for your comfort. I will look exactly as I please.
Longer 1920s Hairstyles
Not every woman of the 1920s cut her hair off. Many kept their hair long, whether from personal preference, family pressure, or simply because they liked it that way. But even long hair changed in the 1920s. The elaborate updos gave way to simpler, softer styles that still felt modern.
Long hair was almost always waved in the 1920s, whether with Marcel irons, finger waving technique, or a permanent. Straight, flat, unwaved hair looked old-fashioned and was rarely seen as fashionable. The wave was everything: it gave the hair movement, shine, and an elegance that the decade adored.
The Permanent Wave Machine
The permanent wave machine made it possible for women with straight hair to achieve waves and curls. The basic idea behind the permanent wave had been around since the early 1900s, when hairdresser Karl Nessler developed a system using chemical solutions and heat to permanently alter the structure of the hair.
His early machines were enormous contraptions with hanging rods connected by wires to a heating device, and the process took hours and was uncomfortable. But the results - lasting wavy hair - were revolutionary.
Through the 1920s, permanent wave machines improved steadily, becoming smaller, safer, and more widely available. Salons across Europe and America invested in them, and the “perm” became one of the most popular salon services of the decade.
Home permanent kits also began to appear in the late 1920s, though the chemical solutions were tricky to use and the results were not always predictable. Many a home experiment resulted in hair that was more frizzed than waved.
Hair Products of the 1920s
The 1920s saw an explosion in the number of hair products available to women, and these products played a significant role in making the decade’s hairstyles possible.
Brilliantine was one of the most popular products of the era. A light, perfumed oil or wax, brilliantine was used to add shine and control to hair, helping to keep the close-to-the-head styles looking smooth. Men had used it for decades, but in the 1920s women adopted it, particularly for the Eton crop and the shingle bob.
Setting lotions - water-based liquids that were applied to damp hair before styling - were essential for finger waves and other waved styles. They helped the waves hold their shape as the hair dried and kept them crisp and defined throughout the day.
Pomades and hair creams were also widely used, particularly for smoothing down flyaway hairs and giving the finished style a polished appearance. The 1920s beauty ideal was one of absolute neatness, and the right product made all the difference.
Hair Color in the Twenties
While the great hair color revolution wouldn’t truly arrive until later decades, the 1920s saw the beginnings of women coloring their hair more openly and enthusiastically than ever before. Hair dyeing had always been something slightly shameful, something women did but didn’t admit to.
The most coveted hair color of the 1920s was platinum blonde: an almost white, silvery shade. Achieving it required bleaching the hair with harsh chemicals, a process that was damaging, but the effect was dramatic. Film stars who wore platinum blonde hair became icons of glamour, and many women tried to replicate the shade.
Red hair also had a moment in the 1920s, particularly in the vivid, copper-bright shades that looked so dramatic in the black-and-white films of the era. The film star Clara Bow, although her famous red hair appeared gray in black-and-white films, was very influential in making the look desirable.
For the majority of women, hair color was still achieved through relatively gentle means: herbal rinses, lemon juice for lightening, or the careful use of commercial products.
Hair Accessories
The 1920s were a golden age of hair jewelry, and the accessories of the era are some of the most beautiful ever created.
The headband - or bandeau - was perhaps the most characteristic accessory of the flapper era. Worn low across the forehead or higher on the head, these bands came in every material imaginable: silk, velvet, satin, metal, and beadwork. Some were decorated with feathers or with silk flowers and the headband worked beautifully with both the bob and longer styles.
Hair combs and pins also remained popular throughout the decade, though they became simpler and more decorative rather than functional. Art Deco design influenced hair accessories and combs were decorated with geometric patterns, stylized flowers, or abstract shapes in the Art Deco manner.
The Joy and the Panic
Magazines and newspapers of the 1920s show us how people at the time experienced these extraordinary changes. The tone swings between excitement and alarm, between advocacy for the new styles and anxious hand-wringing about what they might mean.
The women who wore these hairstyles often spoke of them in terms of freedom and joy. The sensation of feeling the breeze on a newly bare neck, of not having to spend time every morning styling long hair, of looking in the mirror and seeing someone modern and alive. Many women testified that cutting their hair short was their best decision ever.
Not everyone was enthusiastic. Conservative voices warned of the degradation of femininity and the loss of beauty. Some churches condemned the bob from the pulpit. Some newspapers ran letters from concerned readers describing the new styles as a sign of civilization in decline.
From our vantage point today, the panic seems almost comical. What we see in the photographs of 1920s women is not the collapse of femininity, but something much more interesting: women discovering new ways to be beautiful, new ways to be themselves, and having a wonderful time doing it.
A Lasting Legacy
The 1920s ended, as all decades do, and the fashions shifted. The 1930s brought longer hair back into vogue, with soft waves and gentle curls replacing the geometric bobs. Many women who had cut their hair short began growing it out again.
But the 1920s had changed the world of women’s hair permanently. Several things that the decade established have never gone away. The idea that women can wear their hair short is something the 1920s normalized, even if it took decades more for the idea to be fully accepted.
Before the 1920s, women’s hairstyles had changed slowly and subtly, always within a fairly narrow range of what was considered acceptable. After the 1920s, the range of what was acceptable had expanded enormously, and it has never stopped expanding since.
©Hairfinder.com
See also: Retro hair