Roman Hair-Dressing

I may have just binged-watched a bunch of Janet Stephens' hair-tutorials, and decided to start messing around with second/third century AD Roman hair dressing. While many of the styles are complex and benefit from having extra hands, some of them look possible for self-styling. I decided to start with two of the simplest ones:

Empress Faustina the Younger (c.161 CE):

Simple braided bun.

The second hairstyle on the Faustina tutorial seemed like a good place to start. It's a braided bun, like I wear most days, so the main novelty was sewing the coil into place with wool thread. That experience was not entirely dissimilar to hair-lacing--I even used the same bodkin. However, I was working entirely by touch so the lighter yarn was a noticeable departure from the linen tapes. Taking it down again was not as difficult as I feared, in part because the thread was so easy to break

Julia Domna (c.211-217 CE):

Ropes into a double braided bun.

I like how the two-strand ropes work on the side hair, and plan to practice this style further. Though still fairly simple, it feels less utilitarian than the first style, and I think it has potential to look well with some practice. I suspect this first attempt would look a lot neater if I was dressing someone else's hair and could see what I was doing, but it came together will little fuss and has held up all evening, so I'm considering it a success.