Figure 1.--Hair bows are of course primarily associated with girls. They were particularly popular in the 1890s and reached enormous sizes. Hair bows were still very common in the 1910s.

It was for girls that it was most important to keep up with the latest style for hair bows. The memoirs of many well known women touch upon the hair bows they wore as children. The famous 1920s film star Gloria Swanson, for example, commented on the hair bows she wore. Her mother and grand mother appear to have believed that young Gloria had large ears. Althogh noted at birth, the impact of her large ears was not felt until she was old enough to have her hair styled. Swanson wrote, "While all the other girls my age were wearing teeny tiny hair ribbons, my mother made giant silk bows and poufs for me to hide my ears." It appears to have been less important to follow the latest styles of hair bows when doing a boy's hair. Even so, hair bows for boys have varied in size, color, knot, and position. Some of these changes have varied over time. Others have shown no clear time line change. Following these trends is complicated as they varied sometimes significantly in different countries. The custom of tieing bows in boys' hair, for example, seems to have been most common in France.

Position

Hair bows in the late 19th Century were most commonly worn by girls on top of the head and to a lesser extent at the back of the head. Sometimes they were tied in a perky bow at the side, or less commonly a bow on each side. A new style of pigtails appeared in the 20th Century, to which bows were sometimes added.

Size

The bows first worn were rather small. Often they were just ribbons tied in the child's hair. As the Century passed the size of the bow increased. By the turn of the Century girls were wearing quite large bow, even girls of highschool age.

Color

I am not sure about hair bow colors. White bows seem to have been a particularly popular color for the girls. Colored bows seem to have been a lot less common. Perhaps colored bow were coordinated with a child's dress. In the available formal photographs, at least in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the white bows were by far the most common.

Knot

Hair bows have been tied in several different styled knots. I do not yet have adequate deails on the knots, but hope to add some information here as I acquire more information.

Styles

The bangs and the center hair pulled back and tied with a ribbon or a scrunchy is a common girls' style; however, modern girls probably would have their hair styled in a pageboy and not ringlet curls. A scrunchy is a wide ribbon that has an elastic sewn inside. Women and girls use them for ponytails, etc. When placed in the hair, the ribbon becomes scrunched up and pufed out, thus, the name.

Figure 2.--These American girls at about the turn of the century are pictured with their younger brother. Note that all three sport hair bows, although the boy's bow is much smaller than that of the girls.

Chronological Trends

We are not yet sure about the chronological trends concerning girls hair bows yet. We know that hairbows were worn by younger children in the late 19th century, both boys and girls. We are not sure just when girls even younger girls began wearing large hairbows instead of hats. Small hairbows could we worn with hats, but not large bows. We believe that this probably occurred in the 1890s, but are not yet sure. We do knowthat girls were wearing large hair bows by the turn of the 20th century. We had thought that this style was especially popular in the 1890s with girls some times wearing very large hair bows. This seems to have been the case in America. There appear, however, appears to have been differences from country to country. A German reader tells us that she believes hat hairbows in Germany were especially popular with girls in the 1920s. We are less sure about other countries.

Hair Bands

Most of the hair bands we notice appeared to be tied on to strands of hair so they seem to stand on their own. We note a few bows that were affixed on hair bands. This was not very common, but we do note a few examples. One such example is a Canadian girl.

Country Trends

we have not yet acquired information on girls' hair bows in different counties. We know tht there were very popular foe American girls in the early 20th century. A Frenchreader writes, "French children normally wore light colored hair bows in the early 20th century. Normaly the fashion color for the bow was white or pink or less commonly a bow in another pastel color. at less a pastel color. My sister in the 1940s was was always dressed very smartly by our mother. She wore a hair bow almost every day. I remember her little friends. Most all of them also wore a hair bow. They were white or pastel colors. I noted photograph of a little French girl on HBC who was photographed in 1944 whearing a patterened (plaid) hair bow. These were not very commomn." We also note many German girls wearing hair bows. See for example German sisters in the 1920s.

Difficult Images

Some of the hairbow images are very difficult to interpret. The hairbows and long hair make the children look much like girlos to us. Often the clothing or props are anbiguous. Have a look at these difficult images and let me know if you have any insights.

References

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Created: January 3, 1998
Last updated: 4:26 AM 9/14/2005