I know a lot of guys in this era wore wigs, but if you think about what those wigs were designed to represent you realize that the ideal guys of the time all have long hair. Ben Franklin had long hair, George Washington wore a long haired powdered wig as did Jefferson. We had wannabe long hairs as presidents!
I also really like a lot of the hairdos of the era, actually the clothes in general were just pretty good, but I really dig the whole vampire-y/dandified 18th century look.
From now on whenever anyone questions my long hair I'm just going to say I'm trying to be more like the founding fathers.
The picture is of young Louis XIV of France who had some serious hair there.
An interesting time. to be certain. The fashion was, for men to have hair long enough to tie into a "Queue" a short tail at the base of the skull tied with a ribbon. You see many paintings of the F.F. with such hair. Very few if any of the colonists wore hair such as King Louis, or king George. That was reserved for courtians. In Europe, people bathed less frequently than in the american colonies. This necessitated the use of powdered wigs as well as perfumes and snuff boxes, also scented handkerchiefs to hold by your nose to avoid being assauted by the preponderance of body odors. Also ,remember that painters were under strict edict to make the subjects of the paintings look their best, so blemishes, etc were not to be shown. A sort of early 'airbrushing", or "photo shop".
Yes!! I love the Seventeenth Century. They wore their own natural hair more often than in the 18th. I did some videos about it on my youtube page. My name there is Lifecomesfromwithin, if you haven't seen them already & want to.
I am old enough to have been fascinated by pictures of long-haired men from the 17th century and the middles ages, by looking at books and magazines, before long hair became in style for men in the sixties.
Back in my early childhood in the mid sixties, as the Beatles were starting to influence youth on capilary choices, long hair on men was not seen in the streets, it was seen in history books, and "Period Movies" like Cyrano from 1951, or a rerun of Gene Kelley's Three Musketeers.
Throughout the sixties there were a few renditions of historic pieces, on TV, where long-haired men (with wigs, of course), were shown, and my mom saw these as educational. The same attitude went for paintings in museums, as well.
However a real live man with long hair, attracted scorn, and was seen as filthy, a freeloader. Go figure.
Georges.