Figure 1.--This painting shows Alexandra as Princess of Wales. I'm unsure just when the painting was done, but it looks to have been done right after the wedding on 1863.

Queen Alexandra of England, wife of Edward VII, as a girl wore her hair in long ringlet curls. One painting in the 1850s shows Alexandra and her sister as children. Alix wore long ringlets. Dagmar wore shorter curls. Even as a young Princess of Wales in the 1860s, Alix wore ringlet curls (figure 1). A small scar on her neck caused concern before her marriage as it was rumored it might be an indication of a tubercular tendency. It was not. This was to cause a fashion trend. Even at her wedding she wore ringlets. Later when she decided to dress her hair high she invented a jeweled collar to hide it. The collar later became known as the "dog collar". They became highly fashionalble for several decades. The Princess's hair styles are of interest to HBC because we wonder just when boys began wearing ringlet curls and if this affected the popularity of the style for women anf girls in America and England where ringlets for boys appear to have been the most common. We also wonder if women who wore ringlets as girls were more likely to style thair sons' hair in ringlets.

Sources

Battiscombe, Georgina. Queen Alexandra (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1969).

Created: June 14, 2002
Last updated: June 14, 2002