Goals

This is the part where I start talking about my goals overall. I do hair. Not just the fantasy braids that you see at renaissance fairs but historically accurate hair. Sometimes it is just taking inspiration from a time period, and other times it is figuring out what an artist was looking at when he painted something, and then making it happen.

There is not a lot of research on hairstyles in the time periods that most people's SCA personas are from because there weren't that many artists, the art was lost, or (more often than not) their hair was covered by a veil or other head ornamentation.

So let me put some focus into what I would like to do in researching historical hairstyles.

• Find and replicate hair styling products - I found that flax seed gel is a great, lightweight option to keep fly aways out of your face. I am still looking for documentation of its use... but once I find it, I will be completing a journey that I started in 2013.
• 14th Century England - My persona is from this time period and region. I figure if I'm doing to do this right, I should first make sure I look the part. I have recently figured out how to get braids over the ears as depicted below, but there are many other variations with and without a wimple that I want to try to get right.
  
  Source - From the Romance of Alexander
• 14th Century Italy/Spain - Many of my friends have personas from this era and I will be working with them to recreate hairstyles to either support their head dresses, or to give the appearance of the hair in the portraits that they show me.
• GO TO MORE MUSEUMS - The great thing about museums is that the art is both 2D and 3D. Sculptures can tell me so much more about hair than paintings can at times.