Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey (27 page)

The look had been created by Monsieur Marcel (various versions of his full name circulated) as a way to artificially re-create the pretty wave of his mother’s hair. He used hot irons and discovered that the advantage of his technique over others, such as shaping the hair with wet combs and leaving it to dry undisturbed, was that because it was set by heat the style would last and last.

Over time, the Marcel wave would also become associated with the increasingly popular bob cut, when women who had dared to crop their hair often showed it off in Marcel’s rigid waves.

In series four,
Downton
is still in the era of long hair, although the ladies’ appearances can be deceptive, as their more traditional up-dos give way to a sleeker look in the years after the war. ‘We’re not quite at the stage where people started actually bobbing their hair,’ says Vaughan. ‘They kept their hair long and tried to make it look like a bob. But they wouldn’t dare bob it! It is really in 1926 when that look started to come in. There
were
some people doing it before that, but they were very brave, very avant-garde.’ And not living under Lord Grantham’s roof.

In fact, so rebellious was the act of cutting off one’s hair that in 1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald had written a short story, ‘Bernice Bobs Her Hair’, which explored the furore one such young lady caused by doing so.

Re-creating this look is not easy to do on your own hair, although many women did, and there are no short-cuts to following in Marcel’s footsteps, warns Vaughan. ‘He created the wave to look like natural curly hair – S-shapes,’ she says. ‘You take the tong, twist it up and push it in one direction and the hair in the other. So then you get that wave. Then you pull the tong out and you go in the other direction. It is quite technical, but there is a rhythm to it once you get it.’

In the
Downton
trailers the team use modern hair tongs instead, as safety must win out over authenticity. ‘The women of the time would have used tongs that they put in the oven, but they could often burn, so we’re not going quite that authentic; it’s too risky. We can get the same look by using electric tongs – and these women were using electric ones by the end of the Marcel era as well,’ says Vaughan.

She also uses false hair to create the period style. ‘I want the look,’ Vaughan continues. ‘But you have to consider the amount of time it takes to achieve it, and the maintenance of it on set. You don’t want to put all that product on people’s hair, so instead you can use a wig.’

The Marcel wave quickly became a favourite of the fashionable smart set in the Twenties. In 1922
The New York Times
marked the fiftieth anniversary of the style (‘one which every woman will appreciate’) with a special report describing how the coiffeurs of France planned a thanksgiving week, complete with ‘competitions, expositions, balls and banquets’ to celebrate the great man. A cynic might suggest that Marcel’s popularity with his colleagues was due in no small part to the fact that few women could ‘Marcel’ their own hair and so many had to pay someone to do it.

This is indeed a key point that the make-up department had to consider, too – who would have been styling each character’s hair in their everyday life? Lady Grantham, Mary, Edith and Rose all had the help of a lady’s maid, which would have had a strong influence on how good they looked and whether they tried any of these new, tricky styles. Thus it was vitally important that servants like Anna were apprised of the latest looks and, more importantly, how to re-create them.