20 Vintage Hairstyles That Defined Glamour And Rebellion

Marilyn Monroe was born a brunette, under the name Norma Jeane Baker, but in 1947 or 1948, her hair began a slow metamorphosis to blonde, thanks, mainly, to regular sessions of peroxide bleaching from studio colorist Pearl Porterfield. This iconic 1950s look popularized home bleaching for the average American, but the color came from chemistry, not nature.

In 1941, Hollywood actress Veronica Lake became famous for the “Peek-a-Boo” wave, when her long blonde hair fell over one eye. After reports circulated that long, loose hair similar to hers had been caught in defense plant machinery, Lake, as a matter of patriotism, decided to help out. She did so by joining forces with the War Manpower Commission in 1943. Newsreel footage revealed her hair pinned up safely. This was voluntary, not a mandate.

The style, known as the “Eton Crop” around 1925-1926, was sheared close and high at the nape, taking its name from the pupils at Britain’s Eton College. But it was entertainer Josephine Baker who put the style on the map. In 1927, British socialite Margot Asquith railed against women baring their shaved napes. Others, meanwhile, thought the style brave, daring, and fashionable.

In the 1910s, silent-film star Mary Pickford was the personification of Victorian girlhood. Silent films cast her with the trademark long ringlets called sausage curls. But in June 1928, she cut them off and wore a bob instead. Newspapers around the world carried the story. Readers took it as more than a haircut. It felt like the 19th century’s beauty standard was lost in one snip.

In the 1890s, illustrator Charles Dana Gibson drew the Gibson Girl look with its sweeping pompadour, making women’s magazines swoon. To create this look, women used no chemicals, only pads or “rats” stuffed with their own shed hair. Yes, the secret ingredient to all that volume could literally be yesterday’s hair. The word “pompadour” itself nodded to Louis XV’s mistress, Madame de Pompadour, though she actually wore her hair low, not piled high. The towering version was a 19th-century invention wearing her name.

In 1872, French hairdresser François Marcel Grateau discovered how to press continuous, S-shaped waves into dry hair with the help of metal tongs heated over a gas stove. He received a patent for his tool and method in the U.S. in 1905. The Marcel Wave enjoyed its heyday in the 1920s. The style was dry and thermal, unlike the later finger wave, which was set wet.

In 1940, Philadelphia barber Joe Cirello claimed that he’d created the Ducktail style by combing his clients’ side hair back into a seam at the nape of their necks. But around the same time, Mexican-American Pachuco youth in the American Southwest were also creating their own back-combed and seamed hairstyles without any help. There’s no clear winner here.

In 1915, ballroom dancer Irene Castle chopped her hair off. In the 1920s, millions of women followed suit and adopted the chin-length Flapper Bob. To get it, women had to walk into barbershops, which had been spaces for men only. Not every woman was rushing to join them, as older generations weren’t always open to this idea, but it was certainly a symbol of women asserting their independence after World War I.

From 1940 to 1945, American women wore Victory Rolls: hair backcombed and rolled into hollow, sausage-shaped cylinders, pinned on top of the head. The hollow shape allowed a woman to hold a lot of hair in place with fewer of the era’s limited, rationed steel bobby pins, and also kept it out of dangerous factory machines. Wartime media associated the name with “V for Victory.”

From about 1953 until 1958, the British working-class Teddy Boy crowd (young men known for their distinctive fashion and rebellious image) sported the Elephant’s Trunk, a variation of the pompadour that involved a long, greased-down tube of hair hanging over the forehead. In 1956, a British Pathé newsreel showed off the style in action. The style separated them from the more conservative and neater styles prevalent among older generations in Britain.

Millions of women employed in American defense plants from 1941 to 1945 wrapped their hair in fabric bandanas, a look that became synonymous with the Rosie the Riveter campaign. Still others stuffed their back hair into crocheted snoods, or net-like hair bags, and rolled their front bangs. Both were inexpensive, practical responses to factory safety guidelines that discouraged loose hair around machinery.

The Shingle Bob came out around 1923 to 1924 and was a very specific, precise haircut: cut very short, with a sharply tapered “V” or rounded shape in the back. It left a little soft wave around the ears. It was tighter and more fitted than the loose, chin-length Flapper Bob that everyone else was sporting that decade.

Finger waves were common in the 1920s and didn’t require heat. The hair was dampened and coated with a setting lotion made with plant thickeners like tragacanth or flaxseed. It was then set into S-shaped ridges using only the hands and a comb, and dried under a hood dryer or naturally. The Marcel wave was done on dry hair, with a heated iron. The finger wave used none of that.

In the 1930s and 1940s, women set their hair in pin curls: small curls of damp hair rolled into flat circles and secured to the head with bobby pins. Usually left overnight, the next morning the pins were removed and the curls brushed out, creating a soft wave. It required no trip to the salon, no expensive curling iron, and no money most families didn’t have.

Throughout the 1950s, suburban men and teenage boys maintained the Flat Top and the Crew Cut with Butch Wax, a stiff paraffin wax. Many high schools and employers favored these cuts as a mark of order and discipline. They were seen as the disciplined opposite of the Ducktail.

The Poodle Cut, tight, springy permed curls across the crown and sides, was also popular from 1951 through 1954; stars including actress and comedian Lucille Ball were fans. The style rode the arrival of home permanent-wave kits like Toni, which used a chemical solution to restructure your hair in your own bathroom, no salon required.

In the summer of 1953, Italian actresses Gina Lollobrigida, Sophia Loren, and Silvana Mangano made the Italian Cut famous. The shaggy, layered cut featured feathery curls around the face and was reported on by Life magazine that July.

In about 1956 to 1959, hairstylists such as British celebrity hairdresser Raymond Bessone, better known as Mr. Teasy-Weasy, made the bouffant popular: hair teased at the root into a rounded, wide shape and secured with mass-market hairsprays such as Helene Curtis Spray Net.

In the 1953 movie Roman Holiday, actress Audrey Hepburn sported an ultra-short, wispy crop close to the head, a style that became known as the Pixie Cut. Young women copied it in droves. The Pixie Cut came out in the same year as the shaggier Italian Cut worn by Italian stars, but they were unrelated.

During the mid-50s, from 1954 through 1959, male rock ‘n’ roll stars, Elvis Presley in particular, sported a quiff, a high-volume front pompadour that was set with petroleum-based pomades like Murray’s or Royal Crown. While not all teens had one, it, along with the Ducktail, became one of the most visible markers of youth rebellion, and conservative adults and school administrators frequently blamed it for juvenile delinquency.

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