Hair during the Cloche Era

Hairstyles of the 1920's and the era of the Cloche Hat

By 1923 the bob, a pageboy style with some length was seen everywhere amid enlightened women. About 1924 the razor cut shingle style was introduced and the most clear cut silhouette of the year is the dome shaped rounded crown with a much reduced brim.

From the mid twenties styled, shaped to the head cuts, which combined various forms of waving from the Marcel wave to finger waving, became a norm. All of these new cuts enabled smaller closer fitting headwear like the cloche to be worn as the shaped hair conformed to the skull’s contour.

Eton Crop - The most extreme form of hairstyle was the Eton Crop circa 1927 to 1928 and the hair could have Brylcreem brilliantine to increase the skull like appearance of the hair style. Shiny black hair was the best form of this fashion. Josephine Baker wore this style of slick, greased hair to great effect.

By 1927 hair was softening from straight to wavy and by 1928 neckline nape hair began to be grown and thus softening the look of some women. Likewise the way the brim was worn gave a new meaning to the cloche style. The forehead and hairline was exposed as either they were cut higher, or the front brim was lifted back on one side following the asymmetric lines of skirts which dipped and waved dithering from month to month as the hemline wavered with indecisiveness.

By the late twenties women suddenly wanted to break free of the cloche and show their hair to the world. The point that they could have shorn hair had been made, now the new point to make was that they were free to choose to be ultra feminine whilst having more rights formerly once an attribution of the male gender only.

SB