Love Vintage Hair: 1930s hairstyles vs 1940s hairstyles vs 1950s hairstyles vs 1960s hairstyles

So we know we love vintage hair, but which decade are we really emulating? In comparing these 1930s hairstyles with 1940s hairstyles and also with 1950s hairstyles and 1960s hairstyles, I thought I would use a series of my vintage hair magazines all from the month of love…February.

• How do we label hairstyles by decade?
• Video Synopsis
• Early 1930s Hairstyles
• The beginning of the 1940s
• The “Heart” 1950s hairstyle
• 1960 and the no-curl trend

Why Do We Need to Ignore Decades When We Are Labeling a Vintage Hairstyle?

See what I did there? I just told you we would be comparing vintage hairstyles from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s and then told you to ignore all of that decade labeling stuff…and here is why.

The style of a decade didn’t turn on a dime. The clock didn’t strike midnight on the morning of January 1st, 1940 and all of a sudden victory rolls were in. The reality is, there wasn’t anything called a victory roll on January 1st of 1940. But I will get to that later.

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This article is just a snippet of the fascinating world of vintage hair from the middle of the 20th Century. But my blog is full of posts to help you get a better understanding of vintage hair and makeup, so please continue to read and sign up for my newsletter to get updates on new blog posts.

Video version of this blog post!

I designed this blog post to be a YouTube video and it is a great way to spend 8 minutes. Watch it now!

Early 1930s Hairstyles

Let’s look at this hairstyle from the early 1930s. It comes from a Modern Beauty Shop Magazine from February of 1933. The silhouette looks pretty similar to our ideas of a 1920s hairstyle doesn’t it?

The bulk of the shape is focused below the ears and occipital bone. The top of the hairstyle is flat against the head. In the 1920s, the fashionable close fitting cloche hat required this tight, close hair silhouette.

It was right around the time of this early 1930s magazine that hats changed a little. Instead of the all over head hugging cloche hats, there were more tilted and asymmetric hats. Although these hats did not cover as much real estate on the head, they still formed close to the scalp. Think Jean Harlow in the movie Dinner at Eight from 1933.

You might also like: What makeup color should you have worn in the 1930s?

As the 1930s wore on, curls made there way up the head and by the late 1930s, hair looks included full curls on top of the head. This gave way to the full piles of curls we all love so much from 1940s hairstyles.

The beginning of the 1940s

These 1940 and 1941 February hair magazines feature hearts, of course. But note that the silhouette has really changed from the 1920s and early 1930s. These hairstyles are downright opposite of those.

Hair has gone from down flat and against the head and ears, almost like gravity is forcing it down. And in the 1940s, it’s upswept and voluminous and defying gravity with big curls.

Let’s check out figure 4, 5 and 6 of this 1941 Party Time hairstyle. Look familiar? It is the same steps we take today to make victory rolls. (If you’re not using the Roll & Go Hair Tool.)

Figure 4 – First, the strand forming the curl is pulled out to its full length and back combed, or ruffed, on the under side of the strand. Figure 5 – Next, the curl is brushed lightly over the second and third fingers held together, as sketched. Figure 6 – Finally, the curl is spread flat with thumbs and fingers and placed in the desired position.

Some Victory Roll Controversy

Nothing can be popular without a little controversy right? I have read that the original term Victory Roll was an aviation aerobatic maneuver in which planes would spin horizontally in celebration of shooting down an enemy plane or winning an air battle.

I am honestly still trying to find printed proof of a hairstyle in the 1940s called “victory rolls.” I’ve seen lots of “V for victory hairstyles” that have a V-Shape in the hairstyle.

Update: Since I wrote this post, I have found new information about what exactly a Victory Roll is. See it on my new blog post, History of the Victory Roll Hairstyle.

And I have seen rolled hairstyles, but they haven’t been called “victory rolls.” Here is one that the hairstylist creator named “Soaring Puffs.”

I am not doubting that the evidence exists somewhere. Hairstylists in the 1940s loved to give their hairstyles designs these fun names. I have just not seen it with my own eyes yet. Please comment if you have visual proof or a story from a family member alive during WWII calling the hairstyle a victory roll. I would love to know about it!

You might also like: Elegant Vintage Hair Accessories from the 1940s

The Sweet “Heart” Hairstyle of the 1950s

It’s 1957 now and immaculately curled and arranged hairstyles of the 1930s and 1940s has given way to a free form 1950s hair that allows for movement and touch. In the 1954 book “Top Secret’s of Hairstyling”, author and hairstylist Victor Vito writes, “To me the test of a hair style lies not in how much you do to your hair, but how little.” (Commissions earned)

You might also like: Pastel Hair Craze of the 1950s

In this 1950s Sweet-Heart-Coif hairstyle, the curls are brushed and styled, but there is a lightness to it. The 1950s hairstyle, especially in the middle of the decade and beyond just looked easy and unrestrained. This freedom from prior tiny curls and immaculate waves was a long time coming.

Victory Rolls are NOT a 1950s hairstyle

This does not mean that there is anything wrong with wearing victory rolls with whatever outfit you want to. One of the best things about vintage today is that we can combine it however we want, to make us look however we want to look. Wear a 1930s hairstyle with a 1940s dress, or a beehive with a 1950s dress. This is one of the great joys of being into vintage in contemporary society.

But…there are a lot of websites with articles claiming that victory rolls should be considered a 1950s hairstyle. If your goal is historical accuracy, this is not true.

If there is someone out there that has a photo of their great grandma sitting on a couch in 1956 with victory rolls, that just means that great grandma found a hairstyle she liked 15 years before and just kept going with it. That does not define it though as a 1950s hairstyle. By that standard, every hairstyle is a 2020s hairstyle, because we all know women that wear hairstyles that first appeared in just about every decade since the 1860s.

If you are ever reading an article about historical fashion or beauty or art, always… consider the source. Are they an expert in that field? Or check for their sources. Did the article link to anything or provide any proof that they pulled their information from reliable sources? Instagram snapshots don’t count.

1960 and the No-Curl Trend

That’s right. The magazine is calling this the No-Curl Trend. Yes, I know you see some curls. But from the perspective of how much curls use to be the staple of women’s hairstyles throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, this really is almost no curl.

Yes, 1960s hair mostly started with some kind of curl with a roller or curling iron, but many of the final brushed out hairstyles themselves lacked much of any curl.

This February 1960 issue of Beauty Trade Magazine features the “Hearts And Flowers” hairstyle by Ernest Badger of the New Haven House of Beauty salon in Connecticut. Beauty Trade Magazine was the leading black hairstylist trade magazine of the late 1950s and into the 1960s.

In this 1960 hairstyle, hairstylist Ernest Badger essentially only curled the ends of the hair sections. He describes it as, “We do not use a complete croquignole curl-only a partial croquignole curl. In other words, using irons, we carry the hair just to the center and click it in. This way, it makes a very loose croquignole from which a much wider and freer formed wave can be gotten.”

You might also like: For the black hairstylist, by the black hairstylist – Beauty Trade magazine

So there you have it. A brief comparison of the differences and similarities between hairstyles of the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. I hope you enjoyed it!