Antiquity to the present
Periods, turning points and revivals in women’s and girls’ hair — a map of overlapping periods, not a single line of progress.
Styles coexisted, spread unevenly and were repeatedly revived, so these periods overlap in practice even where their dates do not. The main focus is Britain and Ireland, with the global and diasporic history that is essential to understanding them.
Periods with a period essay link to it. For the others we list what the essay will cover; those topics are still being researched and are not yet claims.
to c. 500 CE
What excavated hair, wigs, combs, pins and portrait sculpture can — and cannot — tell us about women's and girls' hair from Predynastic Egypt to Roman Britain, and which regional histories are still to be commissioned.
c. 500–1500
Covered and uncovered hair in medieval Britain, Ireland and western Europe — combs from early medieval settlements and graves, veils, wimples and nets in manuscripts, girls' loose hair and religious rules — and the myth that every woman covered every strand.
1500–1699
High hairlines, hair dressed over pads, pearls, false hair and curls in court portraits — beside linen coifs, lice combs and recipe books that hint at how far more women in England and Scotland dealt with their hair between 1500 and 1699.
1700–1789
Between the 1760s and the 1780s fashionable women in Paris and London had their own hair built up over pads with false hair, pomatum and powder — work done by a new profession of hairdressers, sold through style plates, and mocked in satirical prints that should never be read as photographs.
1789–1836
Between the French Revolution and the 1830s, powder and height gave way to crops, classical curls, centre partings, knots and turbans — though “natural-looking” hair still took cutting, curling, pins and often false hair, and locks of hair were set into jewels for love, friendship and mourning.
1837–1900
Six decades of changing shapes — smooth centre parts and side loops, netted chignons, false plaits and curled fringes — built with pins, pads and bought hair, some of it harvested from poorer women.
1900–1918
Pompadours built over pads and switches under wide hats; electrified salons, Marcel waving and the first permanent-wave machines; and the rise of Black women’s hair-care enterprise.
1919–1929
Shingles, Eton crops and waved bobs; the power of cinema and print; finger waves and the heated permanent-wave machine — and far more variety than the “flapper” image suggests.
1930–1945
Softer waves and salon permanents; Black beauty culture as work and organising; wartime rolls, scarves and snoods — and the gap between propaganda and the factory floor.
1946–1959
Home perm kits, roller sets and hood dryers; the weekly salon visit; ponytails and the new teenage market; and the migration that reshaped British hair businesses.
1960–1969
Beehives and bouffants beside precision geometric cuts and long straight hair; the Afro and "Black is Beautiful"; backcombing, rollers, lacquer and wigs.
1970–1979
Long centre partings, feathered and shag cuts, Afros and braids, and punk’s bleach and spikes — a decade in which no single look ruled, and none carried a single meaning.
1980–1989
Big perms and blow-dries, asymmetry and crimping, gel and spikes; New Romantic and goth scenes; Jheri curls, braids and extensions — and the style magazines that recorded them.
1990–1999
Cropped and slicked, layered and blow-dried, braided and extended — a decade of session stylists, sitcom haircuts and hair shows, and of sharp arguments over who got credit for braids.
2000–2009
Hot plates, clip-ins and side fringes; makeover television and the first hair forums and video channels; smoothing treatments whose risks came to light at the decade’s end; and a global trade in human hair behind the extensions.
2010–2019
Tutorials, feeds and influencers; natural-hair communities and the debates they carried; ombré, beach waves and braids; pupils in Britain who challenged school hair rules; and women who stopped dyeing and said so in public.
2020–2026
A dated snapshot, not a verdict — salon closures and home haircuts, the Halo Code, and trends that now rise and fall at the speed of a feed.
