Yes, Marie and Georgiana spent countless hours sitting for a coiffeur who worked miracles out of pomade and powder. And the men, well they just sat back and complained about the frivolity and cost of the whole ordeal. right????Well not quite! The fashionable men wore their hair both powdered and curled, and don't think they woke up every morning and fixed their curls.
Every man had his own coiffeur ( there were over 1200 mens hairdressers in Paris by 1780!), and although your typical guy did not ask for his hair to be piled three feet above his head
(see left) but they did request their hair to be styled in the latest fashion. For the men, like the ladies, hair design was constantly changing. One week it could be all the fashion to wear two horizontal curls along side the face and the next week four of these curls was the only way to go.Average time to be styled was about an hour. They wore pomade as the ladies did, and scented powder of their choosing. Like the ladies again they would have to cover their faces when it was powder time.
Okay, now I am going to ask you to visualize this:
Prince Kaunitz chose to have 20 or so men line up in a gallery, and while making a huge cloud of powdered mist he would run quickly down the hall ensuring an even layer of fine dust on his hair-doo. Yeah.
So, were the men actually complaining about the frivolous women? Yes
indeed! and to make a point that they (the men) did not fall victim to such frivolities they would often throw their hat on as soon as their coiffure had finished, messing it up a bit. This made the bold statement: Yea, I look good and I know it. But I don't give a damn about 'fashion' or 'hair'.
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