HISTORIC VS MODERN ELIZABETHAN HAIR

There is a lot of differences between modern interpretations of Elizabethan hair and the real thing, designers tend to make the hair a lot more contemporary for fashion than to stick with the exact hairstyle. 
I am going to look at the two different hairstyles in terms of fashion rather than looking at TV where I think they would try and just copy the hairstyle to exact. Id like to find out more about how different designers have took inspiration from the Elizabethan era and made it their own.. 




Historic Elizabethan 


The colour varies a lot between portraits but is always a shade of red, whether that is a dark auburn colour to a strawberry blonde and it even appears a very light yellow colour. This is because of the dyes used and the different wigs making the colours change a lot. Using a wig will have been better to get that beautiful auburn colour where as using the harmful dyes might have caused the dull yellow colour that appears on the second portrait shown. 

The texture of the hair looks very frizzy and dry, which was a popular trend of the era, meaning they were able to create the large up-do's better. Although in the last portrait the hair looks smoother and in individual curls rather than tight frizz. 

The shape can differ through the Elizabethan era but the hair is normally either very round or heart shaped, this is to create the height and dramatic look. 

The adornments were very important in the hair and as you can see all of these portraits have a lot of little intricate beads and jewels to the hair, they also used feathers and lace to decorate the hair. This gives the impression of wealth and royalty. 

Modern Elizabethan

Where as the colour varied a lot between red shades in the historic portraits, the colour actually varies completely in the modern takes. The colours are always quite bright, like the bleach blonde and the vibrant red used on the bottom photo. The Alexandra McQueen runway photo in the middle was the closest colour hair i found to the actually historic hair. A lot of contemporary images also included really dark hair which I really liked and thought suited the heart shape. 
I think its good to change up the colour so that the piece is only inspired by history not a replica. 

The texture of the hair in most images was either really backcombed or curly, most of the images didn't include any crimped hair but the hair would be more curled and then back combed to add a slight frizz. I love the bottom image as the hair looks really frizzy and represents the Elizabethan era really well but with a modern twist because the hair is down. 

Most of the images I found were styled in the heart shape, i think this is because when changing a hairstyle to contemporary it would be difficult to identify if the shape was round because so many eras did a round shape (eg. a beehive) I loved that the bottom image had the hair down because this made it really modern and looked beautiful with the frizz and vibrant orange curls. 

Contemporary versions didn't actually use a lot of adornments in the hair but instead just chose to create a huge hairstyle with height and focused on a more dramatic detailed makeup. I think this is a shame because their is so much you could do with jewels and other things that would decorate the hair and give it a modern twist.