It seems hair articles and images about vintage hairstyles cater almost exclusively to women. Indeed, for time periods before the 1950’s, there are scant resources out there, especially for the Victorian or “Steam era” styles, and there was not a lot of variety on the first half of the 1900’s when it comes to mens hairstyles.As frustrating as this may seem it does offer quite a simple solution, and that is simply to be more relaxed about creating period-specific hair styles and work with what you have to create a look you like. For example, dashing steampunk and Victorian gothic gents can easily wear long coiffured hairstyles or short sculpted waves, and with some styling advice, pictures and video, Wildilocks wants to help you create your own period mens hairstyle.

For our first subject we have the dashing Sir Frederick Chook, who modeled several styles for us, which we will feature in three separate articles: the decadent Byronesque coiffure, the distinguished hidden ponytail, and dashing finger waves for long hair. This article is number one of this series: the decadent Byronesque Coiffure.

For this look we started with long dry hair, and using a large barrel iron and a light coat of hairspray we curled each section from bottom to top as demonstrated below:

Be sure to decide on your part before you start. Each curl was secured with a pin curl to allow it to cool without dropping, our intention was to create a natural-looking curl that would stand up to styling and a photo-shoot (or indeed a night out).If your prefer a strong curl then by all means use a smaller iron; the smaller the iron, the tighter the curl and the further back in history you go, so be aware that long and very small curls on a men were more general to the 1700’s and 1800’s than the Victorian era.Once the hair has cooled (feel the pin curl clip; if it is cold then your hair has set), release carefully and loosen with your fingers.

Use a small amount of wax/pomade to define your locks, as Kat demonstrates very thoroughly below:

The finished result should be loose, flowing, natural, but a smattering of more defined curls, as Sir Frederick demonstrates, ready for a night on the town:

In closing, recreating vintage hair for men means working with the cut you have and the look you desire, the rest is practice, or visiting a salon like Wildilocks that can do it for you. If you have a particular styling period or question you’d like us to look at or feature in Wildilocks Treats, please email treats@wildilocks.com! If you have further questions or comments about the above article, please comment below.

Kat Martin

Coming next in this series: the distinguished hidden ponytail!