In ancient Greece, a maiden’s hairstyle connected her to Athenian society, giving each young woman an identity and signaling her place within the community. Katherine A. Schwab, a professor at Art History, studied the Caryatids to see women’s hairstyles were interwoven with their existence in society-at-large.
The Caryatids, those silent beauties with gorgeously plaited hair who have gracefully supported the South Porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis century after century, have been protected from the proverbial “bad hair day” since they moved into the New Acropolis Museum in Athens two years ago.
There, on a deep balcony splashed with light overlooking the main staircase, you can linger and admire five of the monumental sculptures (the sixth, Kore C, is in the British Museum), from all angles; the side protected from weather and air pollution shows a remarkable degree of sharply sharply preserved detail in the carving of the faces, hair, and drapery.
Katherine A. Schwab, professor of Art History at Fairfield University and member of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, marveled at the rich variety of braids and patterns in the Caryatids’ coiffures–each one different from the other–and wondered whether the hairstyles’ elaborate constructions were based on real hairstyles of the time or were the sculptor’s artistic invention.
In 2009, she teamed up with a professional hair stylist to satisfy her curiosity by trying to replicate the Caryatids’ hair. Schwab’s experiment, held at Fairfield University and titled, “The Caryatid Hairstyling Project”, meant rounding up six student participants with long, thick hair of varying textures and letting professional hairstylist Milexy Torres loose with her expertise.
Conclusion?
“The marble Caryatids were closely modeled after real women of the day,” Schwab announces, summoning up an image of a beautiful woman admiring her coiffure in a mirror of polished bronze. Furthermore, it was possible for an ancient hairdresser on a tight schedule to beat the clock: “an experienced individual could have finished this styling in about forty minutes to one hour, especially if the hair had a fair amount of texture.”
That’s settled then, but who were the girls or women in Athens privileged to sport that “look” and when was their moment?
“As a whole, the Caryatids represent a specific group of maidens of high status within Athenian society who had the honor of leading a procession for a religious ceremony or ritual,” Schwab says. “We know this because of the way they wear the peplos and back-pinned mantle. This mantle is the key to understanding their lead role in the procession... now it is possible to add this elaborate hairstyle as a marker, if you will, to connote their importance. Milexy Torres described these maidens as ‘divas’, which makes sense, because these girls were the first to be seen in a procession, and their ornate hairstyle is spectacular.”
Amazingly thick hair like the Caryatids’ glorious manes must have been the ideal. But was a good head of hair just a lucky attribute of that group of Mediterranean ancients or were hair extensions as popular then as they are today? It’s a toss-up.
“Although some young women have exceptional thick long hair, like the students in ‘The Caryatid Hairstyling Project’, most females would have required extensions to boost the quantity and thickness necessary to execute the Caryatids’ braids and patterns,” says Torres.
Schwab and Torres discovered that the Caryatid hairstyle is especially suited to thick wavy and curly hair, although Kore D is atypical in that she has much straighter hair than the other maidens. Is it possible that ancient prototypes of straightening and curling irons frizzled Athenian ladies hair, whether curly or straight, into split ends and breakage even though the ancients did not wield the nearly omnipresent contemporary electric blow dryer? “We might have evidence for a curling iron, a metal rod placed in the fire to heat up, but far later in the ancient Greek period. In ancient Roman society we know with certainty that the high status women had curling irons.”
Some of us know that wavy or curly hair does not require much manipulation to become a corkscrew curl, or that–fortunately or unfortunately–it does so on its own initiative. Schwab confirms that each time she shows ‘The Caryatid Hairstyling Project’ DVD, members of the audience provide low-tech curling strategies that don’t involve heat, such as “wrapping a lock of damp hair tightly around a smooth stick, then pulling away the stick or just wrapping locks around your finger”. Indeed, according to Schwab some of the models’ hair texture was sufficient with a little fluffing for the curls below the fishtail braid–the blonde model for Kore B is a good example.
This easy way out certainly ranks as an option, but since Milexy Torres used a curling iron to create the corkscrew curls falling behind the ear, and also to curl the ends of the hair falling below the fishtail braid, we’re thinking that the ancient proverb “τι΄ναι ο πόνος μπρος στα κάλλη“ (What is pain when it comes to beauty) didn’t come from nothing.
Running water makes daily shampooing simple and conditioning products, texturizers, and endless other chemical products can transform any head of hair. Did any ancient concoctions mimic today’s sophisticated formulations? “I have found reference to men using an unguent, which would be similar to a styling gel today, and Milexy thought perhaps wax was used, as well,” says Schwab, suggesting that perhaps henna rinses were used to color hair, and that water mixed with flowers, lemon, or other natural products may have stood in for shampoo. “As for conditioners, very fine olive oil mixed with egg yolk can serve as a deep conditioner, yes, it is messy, but the result can be amazing!”
She adds that while ivory and wooden combs have been found at excavation sites in Greece and throughout the Mediterranean, hairbrushes have not–although this doesn’t mean they didn’t exist. There is also more to find out about hair decorations and accessories, says the historian, but sculptures and vase paintings show women with bands or ribbons controlling their hair, often wrapped at least twice around the head to hold the hair in a particular position. “The variation in how the hair was worn has many affinities with what we see in contemporary styles, especially on extra-hot summer days. In every-day hairstyle, maidens would have tied up their hair or pulled it back into the fishtail braid seen on the Caryatids, which works in two locks of hair from each side of the head and requires another person to create it. For the big festival days, the elaborate hairstyles we see worn by the Caryatids would have been the choice.”
Schwab has given presentations and seminars on “The Caryatid Hairstyling Project” as far afield as the Doshisha University, in Kyoto, Japan, where there was genuine interest and curiosity about whether the Caryatid hairstyles stimulated cultural connections regarding symbolism and ritual. “They understood the changes of hairstyle to denote rites of passage,” she says, “because the young women of Kyoto training to become geishas wear their hair one way during the training phase then as full-fledged geishas wears a different style of coiffure to mark their status.”