These Bewitching Photographs Reveal What Victorian Women Kept Under Their Bonnets

This wild trend would seem just as outlandish today as it did back in the 19th century. And it saw a number of women took to expressing their individuality in an unexpected way. Yep, this surprising style became quite the fashion statement for Victorian ladies in Europe and the United States. 

What exactly was it that these historical women – famous for their propriety and modest dress – kept hidden underneath their plain bonnets and hats? Also, why did they choose to follow such a strange and impractical trend? The story of this bizarre fashion tells us much about ladies in the 19th century, and the lengths that they would go to for their appearance.  

A bonnet is not a large item of clothing, though, and it is difficult to imagine what could be hidden under such a flimsy scrap of fabric. Might it have been a place to stash illicit objects deemed unbecoming for the supposedly gentler sex, perhaps? Or was it something really wild like tattoos or colored hair?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there were few drastic hairstyles or body modifications around at the time – at least not within mainstream Victorian society. And bonnets, while stylish, did not function as the best nor the most subtle of hiding places. Instead, many women used deceptively simple headgear to conceal floor-length tresses of lustrous hair. 

The trend for exceptionally long hair began sweeping across much of Europe and America at the dawn of the Victorian era in the 1830s. Naturally, there were obvious challenges involved in maintaining such a look, but women clamored for shampoos and elixirs that would enable them to grow their locks down to the ground.

Generally speaking, the fashion for extraordinarily long tresses was apparently restricted to those who enjoyed the lifestyles needed to maintain them. The lower echelons of society, it seems, often took to hacking off their hair and selling it – ironically to make extensions for women who wished to mimic the latest trend.  

But how exactly did the owners of these over-the-top styles manage to prevent them from descending into a nightmare of tangles and knots? According to the website Messy Nessy Chic, a variety of ingredients were used to make a hair tonic – including egg yolks, soap, vinegar, rosemary and black tea. In some cases, it seems, women even poured rum over their heads in a bid to improve growth.

Reportedly, the 1879 dress and etiquette guide Decorum gave the following advice to those wanting to cultivate their own floor-length locks. It read, “Many heads of hair require nothing more in the way of wash than soap and water.” Some ten years earlier, though, the women’s magazine Godey’s Lady Book apparently gave some contradictory advice.

“To cleanse long hair – beat up the [yolk] of an egg with a pint of soft water. Apply it warm, and afterwards wash it out with warm water,” the magazine advised. But it wasn’t just beauty publications that were promoting the long-haired ideal – and doling out advice on how to achieve it.

Over a 14-year period beginning in 1851 seven daughters were born to the Sutherland family in Cambria – a rural community in northern New York. Initially languishing in poverty, the girls were encouraged by their father to form a singing troupe in the hope that they might bring in some cash.

The seven young women performed with the Barnum & Bailey circus company, and they were a massive hit. But it wasn’t the quality of their singing that drew the crowds. Instead, onlookers were amazed by their hairstyles: each of them had long tresses that reached down to the floor! Their locks reached a combined length of almost 40 feet, according to the Daily Mail.

The Sutherland sisters’ biographer Brandon Stickney observed the effect that the performers’ appearance had on their audiences. He wrote in the British newspaper, “Though their shows – consisting of church music, parlor songs and drawing-room ballads – received rave reviews, it was ultimately the girls’ hair that seemed the biggest draw.”

Before long, the Sutherland sisters had become America’s “first celebrity models,” according to Stickney. And as their influence grew, more women than ever sought to grow their own tresses to ridiculous lengths. Soon, the girls’ enterprising father had come up with a clever way to capitalize on their success.

Branded with the family name, The Seven Sutherland Sisters Hair Grower was supposed to help men and women finally achieve the long, luscious locks of their dreams. But what exactly was in it, and did the sisters really use the product to maintain their impressive manes? In his 1992 book Hair Raising Stories, writer Don Fadely quotes an 1893 investigation into the chemical makeup of this mysterious formula.

Apparently, the tonic was mostly made up of witch hazel and rum, with trace amounts of magnesia, hydrochloric acid and salt. Whether or not this concoction did what it was supposed to is, of course, difficult to prove. Many certainly believed in it, though, and by 1890 some 2.5 million bottles had been sold, according to the Daily Mail.

The Sutherland sisters appeared in society magazines such as The New Yorker and Cosmopolitan, and they continued to rake in the cash from their hair tonic sales. Eventually, they went on to build themselves a mansion back in Cambria, where they lived a life of luxury being waited on hand and foot.

At first, it seemed as if not even death would get in the way of the Sutherlands’ success. The third-youngest sister Naomi passed away in 1893, and auditions were held to find a replacement. But eventually, the world moved on and long locks fell out of fashion. By the 1920s the flapper trend had arrived; now, a short, dramatic bob was all the rage.

For many women, the decision to wear their hair shorter was considered liberating – a symbol of the move towards equality between the sexes. Unencumbered by impractical tresses, they were looking forward to a new era of emancipation. For the Sutherlands, though, it meant that their long and lucrative career was finally at an end.

According to the Daily Mail, the sisters’ story is ultimately a sad one, and each of them wound up destitute towards the end of their lives. But their famous long hair has gone down in history, along with the locks of many other ladies who sported a similar style. So, what initially inspired these women to commit to such an astonishing style?

Naturally, the Sutherland sisters were far from the first women to cultivate tresses that grew down to the ground. Where did the idea come from, then? Well, before the Victorian period was the Georgian era, and loose, flowing tresses were certainly not on the table at that time.

In fact, Georgian women typically wore their hair in a heavily stylized fashion – with plenty of ringlets and curls. There was, though, one hint of the things to come. In 1812 the Brothers Grimm popularized the story Rapunzel, in which a young girl is saved from imprisonment thanks to her extra-long locks. 

Just a few decades later, Queen Victoria came to the throne of England – ushering in one of the most iconic periods in western history. But despite the fact that a woman was now in charge, this era was not particularly kind to the fairer sex. Unable to vote or own property, they were generally considered good for only one thing: marriage.

Like Rapunzel, then, Victorian women were held prisoner. Did the heroine from the Grimms’ story perhaps represent a form of escape to the downtrodden and oppressed? Of course, there is little in the way of solid evidence linking the long hair trend to the popularity of the famous fairy story. Though that hasn’t stopped some writers from speculating about the connection.

In reality, the fashion for floor-length hair wasn’t quite as widespread as the photographic evidence would have us believe. According to a 2018 post entitled Historical Hairstyles on the Minnesota School of Cosmology blog, long locks were considered quite daring and were mostly limited to certain sections of society. 

In the Victorian era, a woman’s hair was apparently seen as an asset to be protected. As a result, most upper-class ladies would have shied away from wearing their tresses loose – at least in public. They may well have concealed long, flowing locks beneath a bonnet or hat, but they would rarely let them down for photographs.

Meanwhile, the fashion for wearing hair long and loose was considered somewhat rebellious, according to the blog by A. Rothstein. Respectable, higher class women might have avoided it, though actresses, models and performers apparently embraced the trend. And this helps explain why the Sutherland sisters came to embody the Rapunzel look.

Sure, the fashion for long hair was seen as wild and even titillating, but it wasn’t appropriate for women of a lower class, either. They might not have shared the same moral panic over flashing their locks as their uppercrust counterparts, yet there were certain practicalities to consider. Hair like Rapunzel takes some maintaining, after all.

During the Victorian era, sadly, many people lived in the sort of torrid poverty that was straight from the pages of a Charles Dickens novel. And it’s difficult to imagine them having the time to look after a head of floor-length hair with such limited hygiene options. This fashion, then, seems to have been fairly limited to the middle classes.

Most of what we know about this strange trend is gleaned from photographs showing Victorian ladies with hair down to their ankles. In some cases, tresses are adorned with simple ornaments such as ribbons and flowers, while other snaps let the lustrous locks speak for themselves. But all of them show women committed to what must have been an uncomfortable and tiresome undertaking. 

Though ladies from the Victorian era were far from the only people to experiment with unusual tresses throughout history. As style icons such as the Sutherland sisters fell out of fashion, the flappers and their shingle bobs arrived on the scene. For the first time, here was a look that wasn’t all about what was pleasing to men – and women lapped it up!

According to Rothstein, the 1920s bob was at least partially designed to shift focus onto the dazzling accessories that were popular at the time. By wearing the hair short, women could draw attention to adornments such as jewelry and hats. On top of that, these styles were easier to maintain – making them practical for the hardships that came with the Great Depression.

In fact, hair trends and the societies which adopt them have been deeply connected for centuries. Back in Qing Dynasty China, for example, all men were required to wear a type of style known as a queue. The look – shaved in the front and long in the back – was traditionally favored by the ruling Manchu family.

Previously, though, the Han population had practiced their own hair-related traditions and considered it sacrilege to cut their long locks. As a result, this new rule caused much displeasure and unrest. Eventually, though, the queue won out – mostly due to the threat of decapitation that was apparently leveled against dissenters if they did not comply.  

Over in England, meanwhile, differing hairstyles were one of the ways to tell the two factions apart when the Civil War broke out in 1642. On one side, the Royalist Cavaliers tended to sport long wigs and ringlets – just like their leader King Charles I. At the same time, the Parliamentarian Roundheads preferred a shorter, cropped style.

Although the Roundheads were ultimately victorious, it wasn’t long before Charles’ son and successor was reinstated to the throne. Like his father, he wore his long, dark hair loose – kickstarting a trend for wigs that mimicked his natural locks. And by the time that the Georgian era came around, the fashion for big hair had grown to outlandish lengths. 

Ultimately, though, it was the French Revolution that put a stop to this trend, and it paved the way for the long locks of the Victorian era. According to the BBC’s HistoryExtra, the whole point of the Georgian’s opulent hairstyles was to show that the wearer lived a life of leisure and ease. Yet with the threat of the guillotine looming, Europe’s aristocracy soon shied away from such ostentatious displays of wealth. 

For a while, then, hair became tamer and shorter. Though it wasn’t long before radical styles came back with a vengeance. And today, there are all manner of strange trends – many of which would have put the Victorians to shame. Take the recent tapestry fad, which involves weaving colorful threads through flowing locks, or the 2015 Korean fashion for shaping bangs into a heart-shaped motif.

As history has shown, not even men can escape the world of bizarre styling trends. In hipster enclaves across the U.S., the flower beard has emerged – featuring delicate blossoms woven into thick facial hair. What, we wonder, might the tight-lipped Victorian upper classes have made of such a striking look?

Clearly, then, the long hair of women such as the Sutherland sisters was not merely an aesthetic choice. With their trailing tresses, they were breaking the mold laid down for them by society and moving towards a more free and equal future. Of course, it would be a long time coming – but these photos of Rapunzel-like ladies certainly marked a step in the right direction.