My Journey with the Elizabethans-My Take on Modern Elizabethan Hairstyles...

Having researched some Elizabethan and Contemporary hairstyles for inspiration for my 'Redheads and Royalty Project',  I had a go at adding Elizabethan detail to a Contemporary hairstyle.  By doing this, the base of the hairstyle is still modern, just with an Elizabethan twist and Elizabethan details.

This hairstyles is based around the very modern bun, a style that many of us wear nowadays, as the creation of props such as a donut makes this style easy to create for even the most inexperienced of us when it comes to hair!  The Elizabethans loved to use lots of texture in their hair, usually created by using things like ribbon, so to create an Elizabethan twist on this hairstyle, I would wrap ribbon around the bun to create texture, as well as adding some pretty decoration.  As well as this, I thought I would add some plaits through the bun, a style that is slightly more modern.  This many not be particularly easy with the hair being in a bun, so when actually creating this style on real hair, I would think about using some small extensions to create the plaits, then securing then with some pins. 

For this style I took a simple up do, and added some Elizabethan style and detail.  Having learnt about a method called frizzing, created by using a pin and wrapping the hair in a figure of 8, I thought a frizzy/curly bun would create quite an interesting and textured look.  Some previous images I have researched also show that the Elizabethans loved using pearls to add decoration to their hairstyles, so I thought adding some pearls throughout the hair would look quite elegant, along with the sweeping fringe.  I also wanted to incorporate a plait through the hair, almost creating a headband, however this did not come out very well on the image as I found a plait quite hard to draw. 

This style is a little bit more intricate and detailed than my previous two ideas.  I decided to take a fishtail plait and add some ribbon through the plait to add some decoration.  The original style had a sweeping straight fringe,  however I thought it might look quite interesting to add a frizzy/ tightly curled fringe, as this kind of curl was extremely common during the Elizabethans.