Braided hair shows up in art from 30,000 years ago
Hairstyles, whether cuts, dos, or coiffures, shape hair on the head, face, or body as grooming and fashion. The oldest known depictions are braids roughly thirty millennia old, and culture still largely decides what counts as stylish, as the men's wig, supposedly started by a balding French king in 1624, shows.
A hairstyle, also called a hairdo, haircut, or coiffure, is the styling of hair, usually on the head but sometimes on the face or body. It belongs to grooming, fashion, and cosmetics, though practical and cultural concerns shape it too, and a style can alter the length, texture, shape, or arrangement of hair. What people wear is largely set by the culture around them, and hairstyles have long marked social class, age, marital status, and identity.
Braiding is the oldest styling on record, around 30,000 years old: the figurine known as the Venus, or Woman, of Willendorf, made roughly 28,000 to 25,000 BC, shows it, and the Venus of Brassempouy, about 25,000 years old, may depict styled hair. In ancient civilizations women dyed, curled, and pinned their hair, setting waves with wet clay dried in the sun or with a jelly of quince seeds steeped in water. In Imperial Rome between 27 BC and 102 AD, noble women's curls and ringlets became so intricate that they needed daily attention from several enslaved people and a stylist.
From Rome to the Middle Ages most European women let their hair grow long and kept it tied up and covered outdoors under a snood, kerchief, or veil. Men's fashions swung widely. Louis XIII of France is said to have launched the male wig when he began balding early, his son Louis XIV spread the fashion, and Charles II brought periwigs to England on his restoration in 1660. Neoclassicism later made short hair fashionable, including the Bedford Crop, devised by the Duke of Bedford to protest a tax on hair powder.
Covering the hair still matters in many faiths and cultures, from the hijab of Muslim women and the sheitel or tichel of married Haredi women to the dastar worn by Sikhs. Modern shifts came fast: in the early 1870s Japanese men adopted cropped styles called jangiri under Western influence, and during and after the First World War women around the world took up bobs and shingles, which in Europe and the United States were seen as a step toward liberation.
Source: Hairstyle
