Nell Brinkley’s Women, 1913 to 1940

Nell Brinkley’s view of a young woman getting a permanent wave, September, 1929. From The Brinkley Girls, ed. by Trina Robbins.

I had never heard of illustrator and cartoonist Nell Brinkley until a few weeks ago. However, she was the highly successful creator of many illustrated stories featuring a series of vintage beauties, from the World War I girl she called “Golden Eyes” . . .

“Golden Eyes and Her Hero, Bill,” No. 1, March 31, 1918. Illustrated for American Weekly by Nell Brinkley.

. . . to a series of flappers in the 1920’s . . .

Customers waiting in a hair salon, Sept. 1929. Nell Brinkley illustration from The Brinkley Girls. “If permanents were permanent, this picture couldn’t be!”

. . . and illustrations of “real-life” heroines for newspapers in the 1930’s.

Detective Mary A. Shanley captures two armed robbers in NYC, 1937. Drawn by Nell Brinkley. From The Brinkley Girls.

Brinkley’s illustrations were humorous, romantic, full of flowing lines and brilliant color. And she could draw dogs, too.

Golden Eyes, volunteering as a Red Cross Nurse, finds her wounded lover on the battlefield. January 26, 1919.

Nell Brinkley was so good at drawing flowing, wavy hair styles that she had her own line of hair curlers and wave clips.

Ad for Nell Brinkley Hair Wavers and Bob Curlers. From the book The Brinkley Girls.

One of her flapper heroines, Prudence Prim, was sent to live with her aunts, who unwisely allowed her to buy a new wardrobe and charge it to them.

“Our Prudence chose a French Maison, the best and most select….” Nell Brinkley for American Weekly, Nov. 15, 1925.

The verses accompanying the illustrations (one page told a whole story) were by Carolyn Wells.

“Our Prudence chose a French Maison, the best and most select. / Her eyes were dazzled by smart hats with plumes and flowers bedecked; / And when she saw the Paris gowns, on models fair and slim, / She forgot her name was Prudence — and she never thought of Prim!”

The story ends with Prudence modeling her new outfits for her aunties . . .

Prudence Prim shows off her revealing new clothes, by Nell Brinkley, Nov. 1925. Note the change in skirt length from image 2, top right, to image 5, directly below it.

“One flew into hysterics, and one fainted dead away!”

Prudence Prim’s aunties react to her new clothes; “. . . with shrieks of wild dismay.” Nov. 1925.

These illustrations are wildly stylized and not necessarily literal records of real clothes, but there is a great flavor of the period. Prudence and her successors have fabulously long legs, and Miss Prim is anything but prim in her clothing choices.

Prudence Prim at her dressing table, Dec. 6, 1925. Nell Brinkley Illustration. The Brinkley Girls.

Here, wearing a dress sweetly trimmed with roses, she adds embroidered stockings.

“A rose upon her shoulder, and a corresponding rose / Embroidered on the — well, the shin — of both her silken hose!”  Nell Brinkley and Carolyn Wells. Dec. 1925.

And who wouldn’t want to go hiking in this charming gray and black and white pleated skirt with deco knee socks?

Prudence Prim, “arrayed for mountain climbing” in a “kilt” is rescued from a fall. Nell Brinkley illustration from The Brinkley Girls.

Later in the 1920’s, Prudence was replaced by Sunny Sue, whose experience at the hair salon had special meaning for me.  (To read more about this kind of permanent wave, click here.)

Sunny Sue gets a permanent wave, Sept. 14, 1929. Nell Brinkley drawing from The Brinkley Girls. “Sue’s fit to be tied — in fact, she’s tied for hours, and her scalp is frilled and fried.”

This is what a hair dryer looked like according to Brinkley:

Under the hair dryer, Sept. 1929. Illust. by Nell Brinkley.

“I hope the permanent will live as long, at any rate, / As it took to make it.” There! That’s all — and say it does look great!”

There are at least two books on Nell Brinkley’s work available now.

The Brinkley Girls:  Nell Brinkley’s Cartoons from 1913 to 1940, edited by Trina Robbins, which was my source for all these photos, measures 13 1/4″ by 9 3/4″ and is packed with full color reproductions of Brinkley’s work. Her heroines were not just flappers — some of them travel to exotic times and places. This book ought to be on many people’s wish lists — it’s not cheap, but well-produced. (One caution: because all these illustrations were originally done for newspapers, when they are reduced to fit on the pages of a book, even a big book like this, the print is very tiny. If you give it as a gift, a “magnifying glass” bookmark would be a nice addition.) To read an informative review, click here.  For price information, click here or here.

The other book about Nell Brinkley, also by cartoon historian Trina Robbins,  is called Nell Brinkley and the New Woman in the Early Twentieth Century.  You can see more of Brinkley’s work online at Nell Brinkley Digital Album (click here.) Don’t forget to visit the “Gallery.” Or just search for “Nell Brinkley images.”

You can read more about Nell Brinkley’s life and achievements at the Women in Comics site: click here.

Permanents and Marcels Bridge the Twenties to Thirties

An advertisement for permanent waves, The Delineator, April 1932.

“She raved about her experience in Paris.” Illustration from The Delineator, August 1931.

These women are enduring a hair-raising experience in the hope of looking like this:

Cover illustration, The Delineator, August 1931. A softly waved “Marcel” hairdo with a low bun in back.  The artist is probably Dynevor Evans.

The hairstyle known as a “Marcel” — and the permanent waving process named after its inventor — had been around long before the 1920’s, (click here for more about Monsieur Marcel Grateau’s 1872 innovation) but the combination of changing styles in hats and a switch from the “boyish” ideal to a softer, more feminine appearance as “the twenties” became “the thirties” made the deeply waved “Marcel” especially appealing to women.

Cloche hats could leave your coiffure seriously squashed when the hat was removed.

Gage hats, 1925. Ads from Delineator.

Many women who had bobbed hair in the twenties also had permanents. If they didn’t have perms or naturally curly hair, perspiring in a cloche could ruin a hairstyle. For more about early (and curly) 1920s hair styles, click here.

Permanent Waves, 1920’s

The C. Nestle Company sold electric permanent waving equipment like this to hair salons .

C. Nestle Permanent Hair Waving Machine, illustration from An Illustrated History of Hairstyles, by Marian I. Doyle.

Nestle also sold home permanent machines, which heated just one roller and plugged into an electric light socket, since most homes did not have wall-sockets in every room.

From Nestle Lanoil Home Permanent ad, Delineator, Dec. 1924. “A whole head can be comfortably waved in just a few hours.”

Nestle Home Permanent ad, Delineator, July 1924. Marcelled hair style at top. Early 1920’s bobbed hair on the right.

The satisfied customer on the lower left is only five and a half years old.

“If You Are Going to Have a Permanent.” Article from The Delineator, May, 1932

Many women now in their eighties must remember these machines, because they were still in use in the 1940s. In fact, I was even younger than the little girl in the Nestle ad when my mother took me to a “beauty parlor” to have my hair permanently curled.

Child after a permanent, about 1948.

What I remember is how very heavy the porcelain insulators — like those in this picture — were.

Other Ways to Marcel Your Hair

Ad for the Marcelwaver Company, Delineator, July 1928.

“A Perfect Marcel Wave in 15 Minutes” for only two cents. Ad, July 1928.

“American women can know the secret of the French woman’s always perfectly marcelled hair…. Marcelwaver — as it is now known — can be used by any woman in the privacy of her own home.”

The Marcelwaver seems to be a clamp that crimps waves into your hair, but the ad does not say it is heated by electricity. However, the photo at bottom seems to show a twisted electric cord leading to the appliance.

Marcelwaver in use, 1928.

Very Short Hair in the Mid-1920’s

All the women wear shingled hair at this fashionable dance. Illustration from The Delineator, July 1928. (Typo edited 4/17/15]

Hair worn very short, and “shingled” to taper close to the head in back, was part of the “boyish” look that was adopted even by chic older women in the mid to late 1920’s. (For more about bobbed and shingled hair in the mid-twenties, click here.) It was not bulky, so it “worked” under a cloche hat, leaving small amounts of hair visible on the cheek.

Four Hats for Spring, April 1925. Delineator.

Women who wanted to wear tight-fitting cloche hats in the 1920’s, but did not want to cut off their long hair, could twist it into a chignon worn very low on the neck in back.

From an article on hair styles, The Delineator, May, 1926. The waves on the far right are Marcelled.

Not all Marcelled hair was worn long.

Marcel waved hair styles from a Mulsified Cocoanut Oil Shampoo ad, The Delineator, February, 1929. A longish bob is worn by the model on the left; the two on the right have long hair.

Longer Hair Returns with the 1930’s

As early as September of 1928, The Delineator’s beauty editor, Celia Caroline Cole, was writing about the return of longer hair — and the confusion it was causing.

“The men who create the styles of today and tomorrow give their verdict on the return of long hair.”  Delineator, September, 1928.

“One of the most chic hairdressers in the world told me . . . that the bob is surely passing. Then two blocks down that same broad street, another hairdresser, equally swanky, assured me that  . . . the bob will never go — it is here to stay.”

The first hairdresser reminded her that “Styles are a part of life. And youth catches on to them first.  Youth makes us do what it wants. The young girls now are letting their hair grow — they don’t want to look like women of forty — and soon women of forty will let their hair grow because they don’t want to look like women of forty either. They will do what youth does.”

” ‘Have you seen women of forty with that little knot at the back of their heads?’ I demanded.

” ‘I know,’ he agreed, ‘they look their years, but they will adapt to their needs this new style as they did the bob. And they will dislike the hairpins, but they will let it grow, just the same — not right away, but gradually, like the skirts — you say that you will never give up short skirts, but here they are, an inch or two longer this autumn, still a little longer next spring, and so on. One is helpless before this evolution, this ‘style’ — Youth sees it coming, and catches it, and we follow. The bob is going. “

Celia Cole noted, “The general trend is much more hair about the face, framing it softly.” That is what the waves of the Marcel did for women in the late nineteen twenties and early thirties.

Waved hair softly framing the face. Butterick illustration, April 1931.

However, in 1928, the other “swanky” hairdresser Celia Cole consulted said, ‘The bob going? Not for years and years, maybe never. Women seek more and more freedom — and they will go on seeking it. . . . Oh, no, women like you will not go back to hairpins and something dragging at their heads. Young girls must try out the unknown — they have never had long hair dragging at their heads, hairpins jabbing in, but last spring all my young clients came in and had the hair they had been growing all winter cut off again.”

Cole concludes that “We can do as we like. . . . What is style for you? The thing that exactly suits your type.”

However, by 1931 she was writing about “The Return of the Long Lost Locks — Hair styles have completely changed.”

Longer hair returns, August 1931 article from The Delineator. The model is actress Tallulah Bankhead.

By 1931, fashions had changed, and hairstyles with them. Hemlines had plummeted. Young women were wearing “uplift” brassieres that separated the breasts instead of flattening them. The waistline had returned to its natural location.

“Nothing sleek and hard is left in the feminine world today.” “The masculine neckline has vanished as completely as the dinosaur.” “Weary of realism and boyish, frankly displayed bodies, we’re going to play at romanticism.” — Celia Caroline Cole, The Delineator, August 1931.

“There was a moment, in this evolution of hair out of restrained boyishness into feminine curls, when the fashionists and coiffeurists came to blows. ‘We’ll keep the bob!’ the coiffeurists cried…. ‘Let it grow!’ the fashionists shouted back, their minds on ruffles and bows and little tip-tilted hats.”

Tilted hats from Sears Catalog, Spring 1933. Both young and older women wore their hats tilted to one side of the head.

In fact, the change in hat styles took place very gradually, but as the cloche hat receded, more hair became visible, especially as the “tip-tilted” hats of the 1930’s began to be worn on the side of the head and tilted down over one eye.

In the late twenties, “the human parade that wanders up and down the streets saw only hats, close little hats that hugged every woman’s head and revealed only a wisp or two of hair making arabesques on her cheeks. Then all of a sudden [last March] forth they came — all those long lost locks! . . . In joyous abandon, they waved and curled and pushed hats ‘way over on one ear.” — Celia Cole, August 1931.

In May of 1932, The Delineator ran this article, “If You Are Going to Have a Permanent,” reassuring women that the process was safe — even for dyed or gray hair. Although they had been available for years, permanents still needed to be explained.

“If You Are Going to Have a Permanent.” Article from The Delineator, May, 1932

Top of Article, “If You Are Going to Have a Permanent,” May, 1932.

Bottom of Article “If You Are Going to Have a Permanent,” May, 1932 This hairstyle has a little roll of curls at the neck, just like the model wearing the $1.69 hat below.

The article concludes, “Most permanents have to be set after each shampoo unless you are very clever and use your combs or fingers skillfully. It depends on the setting, whether you look like a Fiji Islander [or a 1925 movie star] or a sculptured lady.”

The “long bob permanent” pictured above looks very much like the hair on this hat model:

Hats from Sears Roebuck catalog, Spring 1933.  Hats show more hair, and the “long bob permanent” Marcel wave ends in a soft roll of curls at the back.

Changes in hat styles and hair styles happen in reaction to each other.

To Bob or Not to Bob Your Hair: 1925 (Part 1)

Dinner Party from a Toothpaste Ad, Delineator magazine, January, 1924. These full hairdos were about to be replaced by “slicker” head-hugging styles.

I’m not a big fan of Downton Abbey, but I watch it anyway. In the last episode I saw, in season 5, Lady Mary got a new haircut, which is certainly something lots of women do when they feel the need for a change. But there was something about her bob that bothered me, so I poked around in my files, trying to figure out what it was.

Instead, I found a lengthy article about bobbed hair, “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker,” from January 1925, plus many hair-related images.  The article is long, so I’ll break the text up into readable sections (over two posts) and include period images of the styles it refers to. The author, Celia Caroline Cole, was a regular beauty columnist for Delineator magazine, and most of my images are from mid-twenties issues of Delineator.

Here is the illustration and caption that accompanied “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker”:

“One’s crowning glory is such a problem, what is a body to do? To bob or not to bob — and how?” Delineator, Jan. 1925, p. 22.

“ONE-FOURTH of the women of Paris are bobbed. And there is about that same proportion in London and New York.” —  Celia Caroline Cole, Delineator, January 1925.

Paris fashions from Lucien Lelong, left, and Jean Patou, center and right. The models have bobbed and shingled hair. Sketched by Soulie for Delineator, late 1925.

Women Whose Hair Was Not Yet Bobbed

What about the other seventy-five percent of women, the ones who had not yet succumbed to the fashion for very short, “slick” hair?

Bobbed hair had first been popularized during World War I; dancer and fashion icon Irene (Mrs. Vernon) Castle was influential in setting the style.

Irene Castle, with bobbed hair, endorsing Corticelli Silk in this advertisement from Ladies’ Home Journal, October 1917.

However, after the war ended, long hair became fashionable again. The Marcel Wave — and later, a permanent curl — made it possible for women born with straight hair to have very wavy locks. You could even get a  home permanent “outfit” (using one roller, which screwed into your lamp, like a lightbulb, since there was usually no other electrical supply in the room.) “A whole head can be waved comfortably in just a few hours.”

A Nestle Home Permanent Outfit, “Price only $15” in December, 1924. Delineator. It’s going to take more than a few hours to wave that head of hair.

My mother, like many other women, was still wearing her “marcelled” hair in the late 1920s:

A marcel wave, worn close to the head to fit under a cloche hat in the 1920’s. Most women did not wear a curl right in the middle of their foreheads, but her center part was very typical. “A part in the middle is as smart for bobs as for long hair.”

Three models from one page of Delineator magazine, November 1924:  the woman on the left has a marcel wave and long hair gathered into a chignon low on her neck. The woman on the right has a sleek bob with a “shingle” cut in back. Either style would fit under a cloche hat.

November 1924: Three hair styles seen together in one Butterick pattern illustration. Delineator, p. 27.

Return of the Bob

The fashion for bobbed hair returned in the early 1920’s. Daring young women went to the local (male) barber shop to have their “crowning glory” chopped off — sometimes to the horror of their parents.

Barber’s Display card sold to barber shops in 1924. From An Illustrated History of Hairstyles, by Marian I. Doyle, page 82.

However, in January of 1925, most women had not yet bobbed their hair. Those who had, usually wore it very full (one might say, “bushy”);  the author of “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker” refers to their “large, gnomelike heads.”  Ads for shampoos and other hair products emphasized a thick, wavy head of hair:

An ad for Danderine hair product, January 1925. Delineator.  In the same issue, the beauty editor called these bobbed hairdos “very demodee.”

Even these styles, from the Barber Shop display card shown above,  are full, rather than sleek.

Straight bobs from barber shop display card, 1924. From An Illustrated History of Hairstyles, M. Doyle.

That is why the beauty editor of Delineator had to tell women, in January of 1925, that “the old straight bob is very demodee.” [Démodée means “out of style, unfashionable.”] “To be modee and exciting and to look like an illustration in a novel, the hair should be either shingled or dressed so close to the head that it looks like paint.” — C. C. Cole

The Shingle Explained

A Shingle Hair Cut, April 1924. Delineator.

“If a woman has a well-shaped head . . . , the hair is cut close to the head in the back and about a third of the way up from the nape of the neck and from there on it is longer. The whole aim is to have a beautiful line for the back of the head — that loveliness one finds in the head of a young boy.

“If the hair is thin . . . , the smart hairdresser does not cut the hair close at the nape of the neck, but cuts it in one length from the crown to the nape, thinning the ends with a razor so that it will not stand out.” — Celia Cole in her article “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker.”

More Exerpts from “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker,” Published in January 1925

“A dashing little head on the top of a slender supple body not at all concealed by its extremely simple frock.” Pattern illustrations from Delineator, Feb. 1924.

Four Paris models sketched by Soulie, Delineator, January 1925 — The same issue carried “Slicker ‘n’ Slicker.”

“The short, stout woman can very rarely wear a shingle; she needs a ‘thatch.’ ” Round-U Corset ad, Dec 1924. Delineator.

French Models sketched by Soulie, March 1924. Delineator. “The bob has no age limit.”

 

“Wave it” or “Dress it low” if a shingle doesn’t suit your hair or head shape; two styles from 1924. Delineator.

However, if a woman’s hair is thick, she should “go to a good barber — and by “barber” we mean a woman’s barber, a hairdresser — and have him thin it out evenly, so that it can be dressed smartly close.”

To be continued . . . .