Widely renowned as one of the greatest jazz vocalists of all time, Billie Holiday had a stunning voice, whose smoky tones and raw emotion still cause a pricking at the back of the eyes and a lump in your throat nearly seventy years on.

Holiday complemented her showstopping stage performances with a standout trademark beauty look - white gardenias pinned in her hair. What a sight she must have been, standing in the spotlight with a spray of white blooms tucked behind her ear, glowing brightly against her gleaming black hair.

Despite lacking formal training and never learning how to read music, her undeniable musical talent means she is still held as a singing gold standard, and her beauty signature still provides inspiration for countless would-be icons.
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Flashback
While her on-stage look of hair garlanded with gardenias became her trademark, it came about by accident. Rumour has it that Holiday burned her hair with curling tongs one evening, just before she was due to take the stage. One of her fellow performers remembered that a neighbouring venue sold flowers at the cloakroom, so she nipped off and came back brandishing a bunch of the white blooms, which Holiday then pinned in her hair. Holiday liked her emergency hair cover-up so much that from then on, she would be rarely seen on-stage sans gardenia.

It's clear that hair plays an important role in popular culture. Hair trends help to define each new generation and separate it from the one that came before. The 1950s saw drastic changes in hair styles as teenagers and young adults strove to break free of the previous, more conservative World War II era. Everything from rebelliousness to full-on glamour was embraced by movie stars and singers, and was reflected in new fashion and hair trends seen across the country.

Scroll down to see our list of 9 of the most iconic hairstyles of the 1950s!

1. The Poodle Cut
Made popular by actresses like Peggy Garner, Faye Emerson and Lucille Ball, the poodle cut was given its name due to the fact that the permed, tight curls closely resembled the curly hair of a poodle.

2. The Bouffant
Perhaps one of the most prevalent styles of the 1950s, the bouffant, which would later give way to the amped-up, towering "beehive" style, involved dramatic volume, backcombing and ample use of hairspray. Stars like Connie Francis and Sophia Loren, who brought the "European bouffant" to the United States, were fans of the look.​

​3. The Pompadour
Rebelliousness was celebrated by the younger generation of the 1950s, and nowhere was this so greatly reflected than in the widely-popular pompadour hairstyle. Stars like Elvis Presley, James Dean and Sal Mineo adopted the look - longer hair that was greased up on top and slicked down on the sides, earning wearers of the trend the fitting nickname, "Greasers."

​4. The Pixie
Though the pixie gained even greater momentum during the 1960s, Audrey Hepburn's closely-cropped hair in the popular film Roman Holiday began a trend of super short hair coupled with soft, wispy bangs that remains popular today.

​5. Thick Fringe
Short, full fringe began to grow in popularity during the 1950s, especially when paired with long, curly locks made to look natural. Pin-up model Bettie Page popularized the sultry look in her signature dark shade.

​6. The Duck Tail
Also known as the "DA," this popular 1950s men's hairstyle was named for its resemblance to the rear view of a duck, and is often considered a variation of the pompadour. Though the look was developed in 1940 by Joe Cerello, actor Tony Curtis is widely credited for reviving the style, which involved slicking the hair back, and then parting down the center from the crown to the nape of the neck. The top was then purposefully disarrayed, with long, untidy strands hanging down over the forehead.

​7. Short & Curly
Many actresses and female singers of the 1950s, including Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Eartha Kitt, favored this shorter, slightly less voluminous version of the classic bouffant. Perfectly curled and coiffed hair was the signature of this look, though great care was taken to make hair appear to be naturally curly.

​8. Ponytails
Though the look was often seen on young girls and teenagers and commonly paired with poodle skirts, the ponytail began to become popular for women of all ages during the 1950s, as evidenced by singer Billie Holiday.

​9. Sideburns
Another men's hair trend that went hand in hand with the pompadour and a sense of rebelliousness was the sideburn. The look was seen on actor Marlon Brando in the film The Wild One, as well as on actor James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, and soon made its way into mainstream culture.

Perhaps the most famous redhead in history is England’s Queen Elizabeth I. Born to Hanry VIII’s most notorious wife, Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth inherited her father’s golden-red hair. When she took the throne in 1558 at the age of 25, she brought wit and unprecedented political prowess with her. She refused to marry and actively participated in the jurisdiction of her country. Though she was affectionately called the “virgin Queen,” she is reported to have taken many lovers and favorites throughout her long reign. Beloved by her subjects and lauded for her role in England’s victory over the Spanish Armada, Queen Lizzie changed red hair from a fashion faux pas (blonde was the previous preferred color) into England’s must-have shade.

​Elizabeth’s striking red hair set off the creamy whiteness of her skin. Light skin was considered to be the most important aspect of beauty and since the recessive gene that creates red hair also causes paler skin and lighter brows, natural redheads in Elizabethan England became suddenly fashionable. Creamy skin and ruby-tinged hair also meshed well with the rich jewel tones and heavy golden ornamentation that prevailed in courtly fashion. Ladies who weren’t in the lucky 4% of the population with the variant gene, there were all sorts of hair treatments:

I’ve highlighted the word henna because this particular plant was the primary source of red hair colorant since the age of the Pharaohs! Henna is mostly famous as a skin pigment, but this semi-arid shrub also works as a semi-permanent hair dye and was the most popular way to get red hair until synthetic dyes were invented in the late 1800s.
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Queen Elizabeth herself dyed her hair as she aged and her hair became white. The auburn-red of her earlier portraits fades into a light pinkish-orange since henna is a naturally orange dye that only reddens the base color. If the base color is a brown, it tints it red. If the hair is blonde, henna creates a golden strawberry. By the end of her reign, Queen Elizabeth’s hair was fine and white, so the true color of the henna is revealed in her portraits.

Although hairstyle rules were relaxed when soldiers were on campaign, Continental Army personnel who did powder and tie their hair did so with a mixture of flour and tallow, a hard animal fat. This powdered hair was usually tied in a pigtail or “queue.”

In the late 1700s and early 1800s, cavalrymen preferred a “clubbed” hairstyle in which they gathered their hair at the back of the neck and tied it in a firm bundle, then folded it to the side before finally tying it again in a club (basically a folded pigtail). Mounted troopers liked the club because it was “likely to stay in place during the excitement and violent action of a mounted fight.”

Beards were forbidden in the Army of the early Republic and soldiers were required to shave a minimum of three days a week, at least while in garrison. A major change in military hair rules occurred in 1801, when Maj. Gen. James Wilkinson, commanding general of the Army, abolished the queue. Some historians believe he took this action because the pigtail was an aristocratic affectation that had no place in an egalitarian republic, but whatever the reason, Wilkinson’s decision caused soldiers to “howl in protest, until their resentment swelled almost to mutiny,” according to a February 1973 article published in American History Illustrated. It seems that soldiers believed that the short hair requirement was nothing short of self-mutilation.
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In July 1805, the Army court-martialed Lt. Col. Thomas Butler, Jr., a 30-year Army veteran, who refused to cut his hair. A panel of officers found him “guilty of mutinous conduct in appearing publicly in command of troops with his hair queued.” The panel sentenced Butler to be suspended from command, without pay, for 12 months. This was a severe sentence, given Butler’s seniority and three decades of service. While Gen. Wilkinson ultimately approved the sentence, it was never carried out because (unbeknownst to Wilkinson) Butler had died a few days earlier (probably of yellow fever) with his queue still intact.

When it came to facial hair above the lip, the Army took a very different approach, at least in the years before the Civil War. From 1841 to 1857, regulations provided that “mustaches” or “moustaches” would not be worn by any soldiers except for those in cavalry regiments, “on any pretense whatsoever.”

By the Civil War, hairstyle standards had changed markedly, as senior officers in both the Army and the Navy wore beards and mustaches as a matter of course. While a beard could be worn “at the pleasure of the individual,” both services preferred that it be kept short and neatly trimmed. This preference, however, was very much in the eye of the beardholder. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant had a somewhat neatly trimmed beard while Adm. Stephen B. Luce had a much more wild look.

World War I was the first conflict where shaving was required. There were two reasons: to get a proper fit and seal on the gas mask and personal hygiene. Beards were outlawed, and the maximum permitted hair length was one inch.
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During World War II, the Army required soldiers to “keep your hair cut short and your fingernails clean,” and most men in both the Army and the Navy wore a medium-short tapered cut. But, while beards were officially outlawed, soldiers and Marines in sustained combat operations sometimes grew beards – if for no other reason than it was too hard to shave under fire.

​In the last half of the 20th century, hairstyles in the armed forces followed civilian trends, especially in the Army, Navy and Air Force. In the late 1960s, long hair was popular, and soldiers who refused to get a haircut received non-judicial punishment under Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The Navy and Coast Guard, however, simply gave in to relatively long hair and beards: witness the announcement by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. – in “Z-gram No. 57” published in 1970 – that beards could be worn by active duty sailors. Zumwalt believed that the Navy must “learn to adapt to changing fashions” and this meant that sailors should have the freedom to wear the long sideburns, neatly trimmed beards and mustaches favored by civilians. Not until 1985 did the Navy once again prohibit beards on sailors, and the Coast Guard, which had followed Zumwalt’s permissive decision on beards, also abolished them a year later.

In the 1980s, the mustache was especially popular in the services. Although still permitted, it has almost disappeared today.

Today, short hair is the norm for men in all the services, and women too favor shorter hairstyles. Regulations and instructions on female grooming standards reflect this “shorter is better” style. In the Air Force, for example, a female airman’s hair must be “clean, well-groomed and neat” and hair length cannot extend beyond the bottom edge of the uniform shirt collar; women who have longer hair must wear it “up.”  *The standard for woman's hair changed in 2018.

Given the long and short history of hair, the future is certain to bring yet more changes in the armed forces.
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This bit of history was found here.

Click here for some photos from Wartime Barbering.

Hair doesn't stop growing just because there's a war on, after all. 

Modern hair combs are unusually simple tools—perhaps our simplest. Their single row of bristles, usually black, are designed to do one thing—separate and organize your hair follicles into a more attractive format.

They do this effectively, without the need of any electricity. And they’re cheap, too—you never have one when you need one, but you can buy a pack of 72 of them for eight bucks, or 11 cents each.

But even these simple devices carry an air of mystery. Specifically: Why does my comb need to announce itself as “unbreakable?” Does it matter these days? And, of course, has anyone successfully broken one?

The answer, it turns out, lies in the past, as it was the inventiveness of Charles Goodyear proved a turning point in American history, not just for combs, but for manufacturing. His 1843 discovery of the vulcanization process, which cured and toughened rubber in ways that made it a more useful material, was not an easy one to get to. His early efforts, according to Rubber: An American Industrial History, earned respect from major politicians like Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay, but his products struggled on the market and he at one point faced bankruptcy.
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But once he figured out his vulcanization process, Goodyear was in a position to reinvent numerous industries, with combs being near the top of the list.

(If you’re curious: Goodyear died nearly 40 years before the tire manufacturer named for him was created. And while there was also an industrialist named Charles W. Goodyear who came to prominence in the late 19th century, the vulcanized rubber inventor was unrelated.)
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At the time, combs tended to be made using fragile materials like bone, wood, and ivory, which, when dropped, could easily break. But Goodyear’s combs were different: Rubber wasn’t a shatter risk, of course, and it was also firm enough to be used while offering a degree of flexibility. The combs, at first, were not cheap, but according to Chauncey Depew’s 1895 book 1795-1895: One Hundred Years of American Commerce, Volume 2, they soon reinvented the market
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“Various kinds of so-called unbreakable combs have been offered to the public at different times, and the trade is cautioned against accepting any not bearing the gold stamp ‘Hercules,’ Warranted Unbreakable, on the one side, and The Butler Hard Rubber Co. in black on the other,” an ad for the device in American Druggist said in 1891.

It wouldn’t last, thanks to the eventual use in plastic, but there was a time when people thought of the word “Goodyear” and combs came to mind—rather than tires.
Eventually, though, the inevitability that was plastic came, and from the moment that John Wesley Hyatt, came up with one of the first usable plastics, celluloid, it was obvious where things were going. Hyatt was inspired by an 1863 contest that offered a $10,000 prize for anyone who could come up with a billiard ball that wasn’t made of ivory. Hyatt never came up with the billiard ball, but he soon was producing combs. In 1878, he was awarded a patent—one of many he would receive in his life—for “improvement in the manufacture of combs from celluloid.”

It makes sense that plastic combs quickly found a home on the market. The use case was perfectly matched for the type of material, for one thing, but it was also an object that was very easy to make and mold into a specific shape. When new types of plastic, such as nylon, appeared, combs often used the materials first.
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They also became more utilitarian, and less elaborate than the bone, wood, or ivory combs that had come before.

“With the rise of mass-production plastics, the fanciful decorative combs and faux ivory dresser sets so popular in the celluloid era gradually disappeared,” the author Susan Freinkel noted in a book excerpt on Scientific American. “Combs were now stripped to the most essential elements—teeth and handle—in service of their most basic function.”

And after World War II, a truly “unbreakable” material—polypropylene, a flexible plastic invented by two European scientists in the 1950s--quickly became the high watermark for plastics, and, ultimately, redefined the comb yet again.

A 1975 Philadelphia Daily News article, colorfully, highlights the way that combs became a difficult business to stick with. Clement A. Belusar, the marketing director of the then-recently shuttered Ajax Comb Company, broke down how the move to an “unbreakable” plastic permanently did in the company.

“Then came polypropylene and the unbreakable comb. Our downfall,” he explained. “The only time you had to replace a comb was when you lost it. And when you lost it, somebody else could find it and he wouldn’t have to buy one. We’re out of the business …”

I lose combs pretty often, so I assume that they should’ve just waited for me to be born.

“Oh wow, maybe it really is unbreakable.”
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Of the many unusual activities that can be found on YouTube, one of the weirdest involves a subsection of kids who feel compelled to test the claims of unbreakability parlayed by cheap modern combs picked up at such fine establishments as Sport Clips.

Some were successful, even unexpectedly so. Others weren’t so lucky.

(Fun discovery when watching some of these clips: In at least one instance, I ran into a pre-roll ad for Red Lobster highlighting its Crabfest—before, you know, watching someone bending a comb in a very similar way. They know.)

Of course, the truth of the matter is that combs were aiming for a very specific kind of unbreakability—the phrase refers to the fact that the teeth aren’t designed to fall out if you drop the device on the ground, not the idea that an 11-cent device would survive an endurance test.

We’re not talking Unbreakable in the M. Night Shyamalan sense here. Cheap combs don’t possess superpowers.

What they do possess, however, is the ability to reliably comb your hair.

​This history lesson is from Atlas Obscura