Style · Cut
The bob
A family of short cuts whose meanings kept changing — from a 1920s statement to 1960s geometry to a style so familiar it now barely registers.
Style biographies
Styles
Cuts, dressed styles, braided and locked forms, additions and finishes — each traced across centuries, communities and ages.
A style can recur across centuries and communities, so we organise by family rather than only by decade. Each biography records the style’s many names, its earliest documented use (not its “invention”, unless that is proven), how it was made, who wore it at what age, and its revivals.
Cut
Dressed style
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Style · Dressed style
The Afro
Coily hair worn in its own texture and shaped into a rounded form — a powerful image of pride and politics, and also a style people wore for many other reasons.
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Style · Dressed style
The beehive
A tall, rounded dome of backcombed hair — one of the few styles with a named, dated creator, and a lesson in how a magazine commission could become a decade’s silhouette.
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Style · Dressed style
The bun and chignon
Hair gathered, coiled and pinned — a form that has meant imperial elegance, respectable adulthood, workplace safety and, lately, deliberate messiness.
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Style · Dressed style
The ponytail
Hair gathered and tied at the back of the head — practical for school and sport, a symbol of 1950s teenagers, and a style whose tightness matters.
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Style · Dressed style
Victory rolls
Hair rolled high at the front and pinned — the style most people now picture for the 1940s, and one of the most revived.
Braided, twisted or locked
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Style · Braided, twisted or locked
Braids and plaits
One of the oldest ways of dressing hair — and not one style but many, from a school plait tied with a ribbon to cornrows, box braids and ancient braided wigs.
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Style · Braided, twisted or locked
Locs
Rope-like strands formed as hair is allowed or encouraged to mat — worn across many cultures and faiths, and still penalised by some school and workplace rules.
Addition or covering
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Style · Addition or covering
Wigs and hairpieces
Added hair is part of hair culture, not "fake hair" — from ancient plaited wigs to Victorian switches, 1960s fashion wigs, extensions and wigs worn through illness.
Finish or colour
No biographies in this family yet.