Blonde or redhead?
Or the dark-haired, brunette, the one with hair as blue as the sky, or all the colors of the rainbow. Yes, nowadays it's possible to have anything on your head (and basically anywhere on your body) and it can play all colors.
But when did it start and who is to blame for the fact that today celebrities have golden manes on Monday and black as night on Friday?
Meet the brief history of hair coloring. And as it happens, whenever history and fashion are mentioned, we start in Egypt.
Nowadays, the quest for beautifully colored hair is nothing new. But people have been dreaming about it for millennia. Especially ladies, for some reason, want the exact opposite of what they were born with. Although we have a plethora of options to achieve this goal nowadays, in the past it wasn't so easy. The history of hair dyeing dates back to ancient Egypt, where archaeologists discovered a mummified woman with remnants of dye in her hair, a find that is over 5,000 years old.
In Egypt, women used henna to color their hair. This natural dye not only transformed the color of their hair but also protected it from the sun and gave it a beautiful coppery sheen. Later, indigo was also used for a bluer tone. In ancient Greece, rich women wore wigs made from the hair of slaves, while poorer women tried to achieve lighter shades using herbs. But look out for mineral colors too - malachite for green, haematite for red. So this is certainly nothing new.
However, the desire for lighter hair was also widespread in ancient Rome, where women wore wigs made of light hair. The Romans experimented with different ingredients such as lime or sea water. In Europe, henna didn't come into use until the late 19th century, but women also used other natural remedies, such as decoctions of onion skins or chestnut leaves, to achieve different shades.
The Middle Ages was a dark age with all the trimmings. The Church forbade all fun, including hair dye. So women dyed their hair at home in secret and with their own hands, using mainly nutshells.
In the modern era, other methods emerged, such as "Venetian blonde", which combined honey, alum, and cheese and exposed the hair to the sun. Which was a very tedious and rarely effective method, but what wouldn't we do for beauty, right? In 1818, hydrogen peroxide was discovered, which allowed hair to be lightened. Gradually, synthetic dyes began to develop, but some were later banned due to their toxicity. And, most importantly, the public didn't take to them enthusiastically, they didn't trust them.
A revolution in hair dyeing occurred in 1907 when Eugene Paul Louis Schueller developed the first safe hair dye made from chemicals. He founded the company L'Oréal, which became known all over the world. Their product, Dream Blond, allowed women to achieve their desired blonde shade using hydrogen peroxide and ammonia. So ladies, if you're looking for the perfect shade for your hair, remember that the history of hair coloring is full of interesting inspirations.
Did you know?
The longest hair in the world was had in 2013 by American Asha Mandel. Since she is an African-American, she didn't dye her hair, which is a good thing because getting a hairdresser would probably have been a problem. Her almost six-and-a-half-meter-long dreadlocks use 24 bottles of shampoo and wet her hair weighs over a hundred kilograms. Although she suffers neck and back pain because of it, she doesn't want to give it up. What are you willing to put up with for beauty?
