In the middle of the eighteenth century, women with the wealth to indulge in the latest styles took to wearing not only “high hair,” created by adding rolls and padding, but also headdresses that included constructions atop the head or as part of a wig reflecting events, for example, the first flight of the Montgolfier hot air balloon.

MARY FRAMPTON, a young Englishwoman whose family was socially prominent, kept a diary in which she described the hair style of the period (1779) and the time and effort that went into creating it.

At that time everyone wore powder and pomatum; a large triangular thing called a cushion, to which the hair was frizzed up with three or four enormous curls on each side; the higher the pyramid of hair, gauze, feathers, and other ornaments was a carried the more fashionable it was thought, and such was the labour employed to rear the fabric that nightcaps were made in proportion to it and covered over the hair, immensely long black pins, double and single, powder, pomatum and all ready for the next day. I think I remember hearing that twenty-four large pins were by no means and unusual number to go to bed with on our head.

Since recent posts have focused on ocean voyages (Abigail Adams and Patsy Jefferson) it prompted me to present headdresses that had to do with ships. Yes, ships. It was the height of fashion (pun intended) at one time to wear headdresses that were elaborate representations of ships. These “modes excentriques” were often worn by French ladies of the court to commemorate victories at sea. A few style-conscious women of other nations followed suit. Abigail Adams was not one of them.

The Journal of Mary Frampton from the year 1779, until the year 1846, edited. with notes, by her niece Harriot Georgiana Mundy (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1885) pp 2-3.