Book review: 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling: History & Step-by-Step Techniques, Kendra Van Cleave
I recently received my copy of 18th Century Hair & Wig Styling: History & Step-by-Step Techniques by Kendra Van Cleave, and i seriously can't say enough good things about this fantastic new resource volume. It's a full-color, 298-page, 8"x10" book, very professionally produced and packed full of fantastic information about a range of 18th century hairstyles, including those intimidatingly-large "Marie Antoinette" styles.
Ms. Van Cleave is a costumer, yes, but she is also a fashion historian and academic librarian, and the depth of her research and knowledge really shines through in the first section of the book, on the history of the styles in question. It's clear that she's not only done exhaustive research on hair of the period, but also tracked down and reproduced a wealth of visual research from portraits and other paintings, fashion plates, and illustrations of 18th century primary sources.
The second section of the book is called Techniques, and focuses on the practical terms, tools, products, and so forth needed to create these styles. If you have little or no experience styling hair and/or wigs, this section will get you up to speed on not just the basics, but also topics like making your own wefts, adding hair into wigs, creating structures/foundations/rats, and so forth. It also includes info on powdering hair and wigs, and a lot of great photographs documenting the styling methods discussed.
The third section, Finished Styles, is the most exciting step-by-step how-to overview of exactly how to do 22 different ladies' styles and three men's. If you've done much historical research on hairstyles of the 18th century, you'll recognize some of the most iconic ones (giant ship atop giant hair, anyone?). These are shown in a tutorial layout--instructions and photographs illustrating each step of the way, from an initial photo showing the model's actual unstyled hair and/or the unstyled wig beforehand, through to the finished look.
There's an extensive bibliography, a list of sources for wigs as well as style/product names for those used in the projects depicted, and even a tutorial on making a wig bag for men's styles that need one.
The book was clearly a labor of love--produced with help from a Kickstarter campaign, self-published, and as best i can tell, only available directly from the author at the book's website. At the $50 price point, i'm sure there'll be some grumbling at not being able to take advantage of bookstore gift certificates to purchase it, but I can assure you, it's well worth the money. I'm just thrilled that it came out in time for me to use it in my upcoming millinery and wig seminar!