Beautician, Beautician

I was watching DS today and I have a question.
Is there a person at Collinwood who just fixes hair?  In the beginning there was just Elizabeth, but, as the program started to get steam, there was more and people who had their hair done every morning.  There was Naomi, Josette, Natalie, Millicent and the "dock walkers" and this was only the 1795.  

Maybe every familes had a person to do just this.  So, if you were going to 'visit' someone for a  week or a month or how ever long you stayed, you would have to take them with you.  Or maybe, Naomi sayed "Don't worry about you hair, my girl can fix your hair also".  That would be a bummer.

I figure Josette might have had Angelique do her hair, since she was her servant. Perhaps another reason why Angelique hated her so.

When you consider how infrequently people bathed in those days, it doesn't bear thinking how long they went between shampoos.

ICK!!!!

When you consider how infrequently people bathed in those days, it doesn't bear thinking how long they went between shampoos.

ICK!!!!

Oh yuck!!! 

Perhaps all the women had unseen maids to make them presentable, and the men had valets. 

You know, I did wonder once what Liz did about things like that when she confined herself to Collinwood for 17 years.  While she could pile up that immense beehive herself, she would need an occasional trim, but then I figured she just had someone come up from a salon and do it.  Of course, she later abandoned that style and went "mod" after she ended her hermitage (save for that goofy Tatum-O-Neill-Paper-Moon bow she would sometime stick in it).

Gerard

When you consider how infrequently people bathed in those days, it doesn't bear thinking how long they went between shampoos.

Isn't that amazing?  Hard to consider huh?  I can't go a DAY w/out at LEAST one bath or shower!  Don't know how ppl could stand not bathing daily back in the day.  Now, that being said, somehow I feel that the idle rich, which the DuPres and Collins' certainly were, DID bath daily.  Why not?  They'd have ppl to draw their baths etc...

Now, that being said, somehow I feel that the idle rich, which the DuPres and Collins' certainly were, DID bath daily.  Why not?  They'd have ppl to draw their baths etc...

Yes, they could get the servants to prepare the bath every day, but I'm not sure they did, ideas of cleanliness being sort of old-fashioned.  I believe I read somewhere that when Edward Gibbon had done up his pants for the day, he did not undo them again for anything.  Anything.  And didn't critters get into the wigs?

Yes, they did. Especially the ladies' tall, elaborate headdresses anyways. They were notorious for mice, who felt those humongous wigs were just perfect for nesting. (There were even extremely elaborate women's wigs that had real food, fruit and such, that would also attract bugs--roaches.) No joking. Grr-oss! Some wigs actually had real bird cages in them. Again, not joking!

Actually, one of the things that bugged me about the Collinses of 1790's, was that not one of the ladies, not even Countess Dupree, had a wig on. A French courtesan would never have gone wigless. Naomi would have had one too, with her fashion-consciousness. The spinster sister, perhaps not. She would have seen wigwearing as the sin of vanity. Millicent, the heiress from New York, would certainly have been be-wigged and be-powdered.

The men are another story. It bugs, absolutely bugs, that NO ONE had a pony tail! Men DID NOT have short hair in the 1700's (unless their head was shaved for a medical reason, like scarlet fever). And at least the older, rich men would have had a powdered wig. The Collinses were people of the world. They have been living in a backwater little port town in Maine, but they were still rich and influential people, and they should have had wigs!

Oh well, I guess this would have cost extra money that show did not have. They were too busy spending money on special effects!

In the 1991 DS, the men had pony tails in the 1790 flashback.

The men are another story. It bugs, absolutely bugs, that NO ONE had a pony tail! Men DID NOT have short hair in the 1700's (unless their head was shaved for a medical reason, like scarlet fever).

Yeah, that bugs me too.  It's one of the FEW things I liked about the 1991 revival, that all the men either had a pony-tail or wigs (Joshua).