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2/3/2024 The Gory History of Barber SurgeonsWhy surgery and barbering were one occupation in the Middle Ages Beginning around the 12th century CE, the professions of barber and surgeon were combined into a single occupation throughout much of Europe. And, as this animation from TED-Ed explores, while being on the receiving end of a medical procedure performed by one of these ‘barber-surgeons’ was certainly an unideal place to find oneself, this class of generalists did make notable contributions to the medical field. This slice-of-history video tracks the profession’s rise within monasteries to its dissolution in the 18th century as surgery became more specialized, and how the red-and-white barber pole is a symbol of the barber-surgeon’s legacy. 7/15/2023 BARBERING AND TATTOOS? If you, dear reader, were to take a quick look through a few barbers Instagram pages (other social media sites are available) you may notice that a lot of them have a tattoo or two, probably quite a few more. Yet somehow this adult male in his mid twenties (dear writer) has never really thought beyond “that looks pretty cool”, when on the surface of it, there is no real reason for the two to be linked… is there? Before we voyage (hint hint) into the great unknown, maybe the quickest of recaps is required: barbering – very old, tattooing – old but not as old. Hope that clears things up… Seriously though, as you may know from posts such as History of the Barber Pole, barbering is an ancient profession, the first implements that we are pretty certain are barber tools is a barber razor that is over 20,000 years old! And since then the base profession of cutting men’s hair hasn’t changed, hair will continue to grow and laser epilation was a bit less precise in ye olden times, and sadly the Dark Stag Premium Straight Razor just wasn’t available. Of course such minor things as becoming surgeons, bloodletting and leeching, fire cupping, performing enemas, and a toe curling idea of pre-anaesthesia tooth extraction became part and parcel of the role really. But what else would you expect of your local barber? 19,900 years after it’s rather grim conception, and a colossal business boom with the invention of mass production, the business took a hit. Barbering fell out of popularity. Possibly thanks to the invention of the safety razor in 1880 (a.d. now, obviously), but even more likely was the invention and business model created by King Camp Gillette, keep the hissing to a minimum please. As you may be familiar with his work, all I need to say is he invented the idea of disposable razors and the ‘razor and blades business model’, both of which have been made wildly popular, and which led to the decrease in popularity of barbers and their profession. The art had a pretty grim outlook with unisex hairdressers becoming trendy. Fortunately, with indie culture growing more fashionable, and men’s grooming with it, the barbershop is being restored to its pre-Gillette glory. And we here at Dark Stag are thankful for it!  So with that covered, what about the other half of this article, tattoos? Tattoos also have a rich and varied history, with pretty much every culture having a punky rebel stage at some point. The UK has been lucky enough to have 3, the woad phase (ancient Britons), the naval exploration (read: colonialism) phase, and the modern resurgence. I won’t go over the ancient stuff, it’s kind of irrelevant to modern barbering, so let’s jump right in to the rise in popularity in the 19th century. The British navy has quite the reputation for landing in foreign countries, usually conquering and claiming it for itself, leading to that well known phrase: ‘The sun never sets on the British empire’. Fortunately for modern day tattooists, this colonial expansion led to the sailors being exposed to a lot of different cultures from around the world, and a lot of these cultures (looking at you New Zealand, Japan and Samoa) had a deeply ingrained tattoo culture. Which the sailors quite fancied for themselves. This was the birth of the stereotype and image of the grizzled tattooed sailor, and these men brought the images back home where they gained popularity in a major way, even kings and princes got inked (Edward VII and his sons). So you can see exactly how this led to a hugely popular tattoo culture within the UK, and other nations of course. After the world wars, and a number of other events, tattoos had a stigma attached to them, a cumulative effect rather than one defining event, which suppressed them and made them into a subculture of their own. But the fashionable force could not be contained, and the tattoo is now once again in the spotlight.  Now back to the meat of this: we’ve heard of mice and men, but what of barbers and tattoos? What’s the link? One pretty simple explanation could be that both require a clean, sterile environment, electrical tools that need to be handled with precision, and a rather cool old-school atmosphere that few other places can compete with. Dark Stag products are all designed with this classic aesthetic in mind, so they look right at home in your barber shop! Whilst this does logically explain the modern aspects, it really doesn’t cover the historical links. On the surface it appears to be that there is no causal link, that the pair have always been linked, pre-Gillette anyway. One answer that jumped out to me was that, historically, ships would have a barber on board, and as we know, in the olden times these guys would have to switch between straight razor and scalpel and just pray they didn’t get the order muddled up. And we also know that these ships were the first modern Europeans to encounter the cultures that were heavily tattooed.  Some would have been inked in these foreign lands, but I am willing to bet that some sailors would have liked the idea of getting them after seeing these examples, and who else is better to perform this art than the ships resident barber surgeon? From there the barbers leave the ships, set up a business and well there you have it, the barber-tattoo wombo combo that seems so familiar to us. There is one final interpretation however, and it really speaks to me. The subculture stems back to barber shop culture and its roots, as well as the seemingly permanent stigma regarding tattooed people. It’s easy to understand how comfortable a tatted professional or artist would feel working in an environment that supports how they like to express themselves, particularly one that is seen as so ‘alternative’. A mutual respect for each other on this basis would really encourage working together. And barber shops are the place to be to provide it. Men travel to barber shops and tattoo parlours to forge and expand their identities, and the venues have come to represent a distinct set of values that are… well, valued by their customers and the people working there. Going to a barber shop is no longer just about getting your hair cut, it’s also about finding a place where you can relax and be amongst like-minded people without feeling judged. And the same applies to tattoo shops, so it’s no wonder the two are so closely linked!  So there you have it! I’ve supplied the ideas and knowledge, it’s up to you to decide which fits in with your worldview. The question is, which answer do you choose?
Until next time Dark Stag Team Tightly curled scalp hair protected early humans from the sun’s radiative heat, allowing their brains to grow to sizes comparable to those of modern humans.  A graphic showing how scientists used a thermal manikin and human hair wigs to measure heat transfer from the scalp. Credit: Melisa Morales Garcia. All Rights Reserved. Curly hair does more than simply look good — it may explain how early humans stayed cool while conserving water, according to researchers who studied the role human hair textures play in regulating body temperature. The findings can shed light on an evolutionary adaptation that enabled the human brain to grow to modern-day sizes. “Humans evolved in equatorial Africa, where the sun is overhead for much of the day, year in and year out,” said Nina Jablonski, Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology at Penn State. “Here the scalp and top of the head receive far more constant levels of intense solar radiation as heat. We wanted to understand how that affected the evolution of our hair. We found that tightly curled hair allowed humans to stay cool and actually conserve water.” The researchers used a thermal manikin — a human-shaped model that uses electric power to simulate body heat and allows scientists to study heat transfer between human skin and the environment — and human-hair wigs to examine how diverse hair textures affect heat gain from solar radiation. The scientists programmed the manikin to maintain a constant surface temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius), similar to the average surface temperature of skin, and set it in a climate-controlled wind tunnel.  A thermal manikin wearing tightly curled (left) and straight (right) human hair wigs. The manikin uses electric power to simulate body heat and allows scientists to study heat transfer between human skin and the environment. A new study examining the role human hair textures play in regulating body temperature found that tightly curled hair provides the best protection from the sun’s radiative heat while minimizing the need to sweat to stay cool. Credit: George Havenith, Loughborough University. All Rights Reserved. The team took base measurements of body heat loss by monitoring the amount of electricity required by the manikin to maintain a constant temperature. Then they shined lamps on the manikin’s head to mimic solar radiation under four scalp hair conditions — none, straight, moderately curled and tightly curled. The scientists calculated the difference in total heat loss between the lamp measurements and the base measurements to determine the influx of solar radiation to the head, explained George Havenith, director of the Environmental Ergonomics Research Centre at Loughborough University, U.K., who led the manikin experiments. They also calculated heat loss at different windspeeds and after wetting the scalp to simulate sweating. They ran their results through a model to study how the diverse hair textures would affect heat gain in 86-degree Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius) heat and 60% relative humidity, like environments in equatorial Africa. The researchers found that all hair reduced solar radiation to the scalp, but tightly curled hair provided the best protection from the sun’s radiative heat while minimizing the need to sweat to stay cool. They reported their findings yesterday (June 6) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Walking upright is the setup and brain growth is the payoff of scalp hair,” said Tina Lasisi, who conducted the study as part of her doctoral dissertation at Penn State. Lasisi will start as an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan in the fall. As early humans evolved to walk upright in equatorial Africa, the tops of their heads increasingly took the brunt of solar radiation, explained Lasisi. The brain is sensitive to heat, and it generates heat, especially the larger it grows. Too much heat can lead to dangerous conditions like heat stroke. As humans lost much of their body hair, they developed efficient sweat glands to keep cool, but sweating comes at a cost in lost water and electrolytes. Scalp hair likely evolved as a way to reduce the amount of heat gain from solar radiation, thereby keeping humans cool without the body having to expend extra resources, said Lasisi. “Around 2 million years ago we see Homo erectus, which had the same physical build as us but a smaller brain size,” she said. “And by 1 million years ago, we’re basically at modern-day brain sizes, give or take. Something released a physical constraint that allowed our brains to grow. We think scalp hair provided a passive mechanism to reduce the amount of heat gained from solar radiation that our sweat glands couldn’t.” The multidisciplinary research provides important preliminary results for bettering our understanding of how human hair evolved without putting humans in potentially dangerous situations, said Jablonski. The study also shows that evolutionary anthropologists have an extra tool in the thermal manikin – normally used for testing the functionality of protective clothing – for quantifying human data that is otherwise very difficult to capture, added Havenith. “The work that’s been done on skin color and how melanin protects us from solar radiation can shape some of the decisions that a person makes in terms of the amount of sunscreen needed in certain environments,” said Lasisi. “I imagine that similar decision making can occur with hair. When you think about the military or different athletes exercising in diverse environments, our findings give you a moment to reflect and think: is this hairstyle going to make me overheat more easily? Is this the way that I should optimally wear my hair?” Also contributing to the research were James Smallcombe, Loughborough University and the University of Australia; and from Penn State Larry Kenney, professor of physiology, kinesiology and Marie Underhill Noll Chair in Human Performance; Mark Shriver, professor of anthropology; and Benjamin Zydney, previously an undergraduate research assistant and now a Penn State alum. The National Science Foundation and the Wenner-Gren Foundation supported this work. from PennStateEdu
2/27/2023 What's that on your head...How Wigs are MadeThere are lots of reasons people wear wigs. Some wear wigs due to illness, baldness or as part of their religion. Some like to experiment with new styles or colours. Some wear wigs as part of their job - like actors, judges or even clowns. We know why wigs are worn, but few know how they’re manufactured. Read on to find out how wigs are made.  A wig – short for periwig – an old English word for the long, often curly, flowing headpieces worn mainly by men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries – is a head covering made of real or artificial hair. They have been worn in one form or another for thousands of years. How wigs are made today differs unrecognisably from wigs made at the dawn of recorded history. Here, you’ll find the answer to the question: how are wigs made? A Short History of Wigs Wigs have been worn since times of antiquity, starting perhaps with the Ancient Egyptians who shaved their heads but didn’t want sunburn. The ancient Assyrians, Greeks and Romans also wore wigs, and the quality of one’s wig was a symbol of wealth and status, hence the modern-day term ‘bigwig’. The richest in ancient Egypt even had wigs made from finely-spun silver! It was reported that Julius Caesar wore a wig to hide his baldness and the use of wigs in Ancient Rome was relatively common. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire around 500 AD, the use of wigs declined and they weren’t widely reported again for another thousand years. Come the sixteenth century and the popularity of wigs returned, thanks largely to royalty. Elizabeth I wore a wig, and the wigs of the French and English kings and nobility were extraordinarily ornate, not to mention very heavy. When considering how wigs were manufactured in the nineteenth century, they required an incredibly complex process of manufacture, meaning they remained available only to the wealthiest in society. Indeed, it wasn’t until the 20th century, in the 1960s, when synthetic wigs became available that they were worn more widely as general fashion items. Today, wig making is a multi-billion pound global industry and here, we’ll answer the question ‘how are wigs made?’ Types of Wigs There are lots of different types of wigs and they can broadly be broken down into four main categories. Monofilament – these wigs are light and durable and they replicate the natural way the hair moves from the scalp. Lace-Front – lace-front wigs are incredibly natural looking and create the illusion of a perfectly natural, albeit hand-constructed, hairline. Hand-Tied – hand-tied wigs can either be synthetic wigs or custom human hair wigs and each hair is sewn to the mesh by hand. They are versatile and very light. Wefted or Open-Cap – This type of wig is usually synthetic and the most affordable. They are perfectly suited to the occasional wearer but aren’t very versatile. Synthetic Synthetic wigs are constructed from man-made fibres such as polyester, nylon or acrylic and they are treated through a number of complex chemical processes to ensure they have the look and feel of natural human hair. The benefits of synthetic wigs is that they come in virtually any colour shade, they retain their style easily and are bought off-the-shelf so they are cheaper than custom human hair wigs. The downsides are that there is little versatility, i.e. you can’t go from straight to curly using the same wig and often can’t be heat-treated. Custom Human Hair Wigs These wigs use human hair with an invisible hairline so they are as realistic-looking as natural hair. They are much easier to customise than a synthetic wig and can withstand treatments from blow dryers, straighteners or curling tongs. They also last much longer than synthetic wigs but are invariably more expensive. How Wigs are Manufactured The process of how custom wigs are made and how synthetic wigs are manufactured is virtually identical and both methods are specialised and complex. First, a master wig maker will measure the client’s head. Then, using a simple method of cellophane and masking tape, they will make a cast of the head that sits on a head-shaped block of wood or canvas. The outline of the cast is drawn onto the block, which is then covered with a fine silk mesh held on with pins. This preparation ensures the final product (which can cost many thousands of pounds for the best quality wigs) is a perfect fit. Preparing the Hair This is the most important aspect in the process of how wigs are made. In consultation with the client, the wig maker will choose the hair to be used and ensure it is all facing in the same direction from the root to the tip, ensuring the cuticles are all intact. Once the wig maker has the hair they need, it’s bound together in bundles and run through a hackle – a kind of upturned comb with very long, pointed needles – to remove short hairs. It’s at this point that the hair is closely inspected for nits. If any are found, the hair is boiled in a solution of acetic acid and combed through with a nit comb, the same way your parents did when there was a nit outbreak at school. The answer to the question ‘how do they make wigs’ is now starting to come together. For synthetic hair wigs, the length of hair is chosen by the client and it goes through the same binding and hackling process as natural hair. Sorting the Style After the hackling, the hair is washed and disinfected and then rinsed through a number of times to remove all shampoo and disinfectant residue. It is then either left to dry naturally or in an oven at around 80°C – 100°C. Some wig makers will hackle the hair again at this point and it’s now that the hair is curled, waved, coloured or styled to the client’s wish. The Knotting How are wigs manufactured? This is now the most important and time consuming element of the whole process. It’s called knotting. The wig maker uses a needle to attach the hair to the base and a professionally-made, full wig from an expert requires up to 40,000 individual knots, all done meticulously by hand. When the wig is complete, a last row of knotting is done to finish the edges and the inside of the wig is treated with a hot iron press to secure each knot in place to prevent any from falling out. Now you know how wigs are made but a more important question for the client is how long does it take to make a wig? Wigs at the affordable end of the scale can take as little as a month, but for the finest quality wigs from the best wig makers in the world, a wait of six months to a year is not unheard of. from Discovery UK  Before modern liquid shampoo became widespread, hair care routines didn’t involve so much plastic waste. Now, we are conditioned (!) to believe we need liquid shampoo in plastic bottles that usually get disposed of rather than refilled, and solid soap is considered a niche. However, thanks to environmental awareness about plastic waste and renewed attention on some of the harmful effects of toxic synthetic ingredients in many liquid soap brands, shampoo bars are making a comeback. But where did the humble shampoo bar come from? And how did it fall out of use? Below we nerd out on the history of the cult zero waste beauty product, explore the role of British cruelty-free beauty pioneer LUSH in “reinventing” shampoo bar in the past two decades, and how we might be looking at bottle-free becoming mainstream again soon. Where Did Shampoo Come From? The word “shampoo” entered the English language around three centuries ago, and it originates from India in the colonial era. It is derived from the Hindi word champo and the Sanskrit root chapati (yes like the popular Indian flatbread), which is to press or knead. The practice of “shampooing” therefore meant to massage the scalp with fragrant oils, rather than hair washing as the word is understood today. The hair treatment was introduced to European societies when colonial traders returned with the local Indian custom of cleansing the hair and body with massage and oils.  Shampooing – cleansing the excess oil and dirt from our hair – was also done using other natural methods, such as using vegetable starch and wood ash to absorb excess oil and wash hair. In the 19th century, people also started to use soap bars containing palm fruit oil and coconut oil to wash their body and hair. So the concept of using a packaging-free solid bars to clean our hair isn’t exactly “new” – it has been around for centuries, long before “zero-waste” even became a term. With the dawn of liquid surfactants that scientists created to efficiently remove dirt, a few opportunistic cosmetics companies jumped on the idea of developing products that marked the start of what would become a billion-dollar industry. We started seeing different types of commercial soap displayed on retail shelves in the 1930s and 40s: liquid shampoo, body wash and gels, liquid conditioners – all of which by necessity had to be packaged in containers. At around the same time, plastic as a material became favoured as a replacement for less convenient and more expensive forms of packaging such as paper and glass. The single-use/disposable personal care industry was thus born. The Rise Of Modern Bottled Liquid Shampoo Slowly, these liquid shampoos in plastic containers and bottles became widespread in almost every family bathroom. Though unarguably convenient to use, these products generate massive amounts of waste and neither consumers nor businesses considered the effect off their choices when it came to the lifespan of the container bottles. It is estimated that over a lifetime, the average person goes through 800 plastic shampoo bottles – the majority of which ends up in landfills or in our oceans, which are then further broken down into microplastics, choking marine life and contaminating our own water and food. Needless to say, recycling has never been and continues not to be the answer, with waste regulations and recycling infrastructure mostly unavailable in large swaths of the globe.  As reports of the scale of our plastic pollution began to surface and headlines about the massive Pacific trash vortex became more widespread, environmentalists and concerned consumers became concerned about everyday consumption habits and the throwaway culture that was becoming pervasive. This heightened eco awareness saw the advent of the now worldwide “zero-waste” lifestyle, which initially began as niche grassroots concern that later morphed into today’s global movement. How LUSH’s Co-Founder Upended An Industry Over in the United Kingdom, a couple of alternative upstarts were looking to disrupt the personal care industry. In the 1980s, Mo Constantine, co-founder of cult beauty brand LUSH (known as Constantine & Weir, and later Cosmetics-To-Go at the time before they rebranded to LUSH in 1995) was struck by inspiration thanks to an unlikely source: Alka-Seltzer. The fizzing tablets led her to create the brand’s ubiquitous bath bombs, which were also the first product they sold ‘naked,’ aka without packaging. Shortly thereafter, Constantine and Stan Kryszta, the brand’s cosmetic chemist, sought to reinvent the traditional soap bar specifically for hair. Unlike other soap bars on the market at the time, which were based on oils and fats (the traditional recipe for soap), Mo and Stan came up with an innovative formula for a solid version of liquid shampoo. When they first launched their shampoo bar product in 1988 under the Constantine & Weir name, it became so popular that they successfully applied for and won a composition patent for their groundbreaking recipe. Years after the now famous shampoo bar was born in the kitchens that later became LUSH, the brand remains the keepsake of the invention, even though the original patent expired in 2011.  Thanks to LUSH, eco-friendly beauty products have been on consumers’ radars like never before, as the brand has captured a (mostly) young and eco-conscious generation with their low waste range and naked store concept, with the brand reportedly saving around 30 million plastic bottles from landfills over the past year alone. Amid a recent public outcry on plastic waste, the company has even launched a carbon positive cork container for the shampoo bars, manufactured using regeneratively grown cork (which absorbs carbon from our atmosphere) and transported via sailboats. The Shampoo Bar Goes Mass LUSH shampoo bars are infused with blends of natural ingredients with cleansing yet soothing properties, such as cinnamon leaf oil, contain no preservatives, and most importantly, do not require any packaging or container. Compared to the average bottle of liquid shampoo, solid shampoo bars last around three times as long and only need be stored on a dish. In recent years, a plastic-free and zero-waste beauty movement has taken hold and become more mainstream. As well as LUSH‘s pioneering range, other independent beauty brands with a sustainability focus have also developed their shampoo bars, many of them featuring natural, plant-based and organic ingredients- brands like Lamazuna (France), Meow Meow Tweet (US) and Ethique (New Zealand) filled Insta feeds the world over with their low-waste, plastic-free modern bars to suit every eco warrior hair type. Even mainstream cosmetics corporations have caught onto the trend and launched eco-friendly and plastic-free beauty products, hoping to catch a share of this budding market. The shampoo bar crazy has also spawned a whole range of plastic-free bars from face moisturisers to pet soaps to hair conditioner, all formulated for various care concerns and all made available sans packaging. In the midst of the many environmental issues the planet is facing, from global warming to biodiversity loss, plastic pollution is one that we can easily tackle individually by making easy switches in our everyday habits. So go on, ditch the bottle and choose the (shampoo) bar- it’s an easy choice you can feel seriously good about. Editor’s Note: This article was updated with more accurate and complete information about the shampoo bar’s 1988 patent filing and origin story. from Green Queen |
Hair by BrianMy name is Brian and I help people confidently take on the world. CategoriesAll Advice Announcement Awards Balayage Barbering Beach Waves Beauty News Book Now Brazilian Treatment Clients Cool Facts COVID 19 Health COVID 19 Update Curlies EGift Card Films Follically Challenged Gossip Grooming Hair Care Haircolor Haircut Hair Facts Hair History Hair Loss Hair Styling Hair Tips Hair Tools Health Health And Safety Healthy Hair Highlights Holidays Humor Mens Hair Men's Long Hair Newsletter Ombre Policies Procedures Press Release Previous Blog Privacy Policy Product Knowledge Product Reviews Promotions Read Your Labels Recommendations Reviews Scalp Health Science Services Social Media Summer Hair Tips Textured Hair Thinning Hair Travel Tips Trending Wellness Womens Hair Archives
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