subject: Are Hair Extensions A Modern Day Phenomenon? [print this page] You may associate beauty treatments such as hair extensions with celebrity style. It can be quite a long winded and technical process, but there have been versions of hair extensions in use since ancient times. If you choose to extend your locks, you are doing exactly what the girls from TVs The Only Way is Essex do to look glamorous and also the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra.
Cleopatra was known to wear wigs and to have human hair added to her own locks as a symbol of her status as queen. Jewels and other adornments could be attached to this. Their popularity was not limited to women though and it was commonplace for men of high status to shave their heads and use wigs or hair pieces to replace their natural hair. As well as being an act of cosmetic enhancement, this could be used well for hygiene reasons at the time, bearing in mind people didnt wash so often then and certainly not their hair.
This trend continued steadily up until about 1800 until fake hair and extensions were frowned upon and natural, unadorned hair became the order of the day. However, during the early 1880s, more than 150,000kgs of artificial human hair were sold in France.
Once Asian countries learned how to create hair extensions and wigs, the history of hair extensions changed forever. Made out of human hair, the adornments were coated in beeswax or plant resin in order to adhere to the scalp.
Traditionally, hair extensions were only worn by the very wealthy; they could not only afford the cost but also the time to spend up to fifteen hours sitting in a salon chair. It was during the 1970s that the appeal of hair extensions began to grow again, thanks to celebrities who began to set the trend as well as the cosmetic excesses of the glam-rock era; this brought a renewed fascination with wigs, fake hair and extensions, not to mention extreme make up.
During the 1990s, pop phenomenon the Spice Girls were avid fans of wigs, extensions and other hair adornments and this led the way for a whole new generation of girls experimenting and wanting to look like their idols. A younger set of people were now purchasing hair extensions and this younger market is one of the reasons why hair products are so popular today. Girls Aloud clearly owe much more to their nineties predecessors than just their music.
