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| Natural 40s beauty |
1940s hairstyles concentrated on glamour and height. It was a highly stylised 'oomph' period and to achieve the perfect look required considerable time and effort. Barely anyone wore dead straight hair so if you lacked bounce in the curl department, you would have needed a perm and/or a set with rollers. Often the hair was worn wavy and loose, to chin or shoulder length, either with the top pulled back very loosely from the forehead to provide bouncy height and secured with pins or with an elaborate rolled fringe (bangs) to give a smoother, sleeker stylistic effect.
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| Betty Grable with ionic pincurls |
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| Stylistic influence? |
Fringes were never left flat and straight and in some cases the bouffy bangs emulated the decorative features of an ancient Greek column - note Betty Grables
ionic-style forehead curls.
As by far the vast majority of women wore hats in the 1940s, the crown part of the head, behind the 'pompadour' front was left smoothish. As an alternative to a hat, sometimes all the loose hair was gathered into a
snood.
Although short hair had been the hot fashion choice of the preceding decade (the 30s), in the 1940s women's hair got distinctly longer, partly because there was a move back to voluptuous femininity and away from the boyish figures and styles that had so dominated the 20s and 30s.
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| Stylistic influence? |
An alternative style was to pile everything on top of the head in a mass of heavy curls - the hair was stretched up at the back and sides and secured with clasps and pins in a top-notch toward the front of the head. It was an uplifting, glitzy style but gave the wearer a bit of a top-heavy look.
1940s Poster Girls
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| Lucille Ball Stylised Hollywood beauty |
