![]() But Washington’s use of powder raises the question, how did he avoid the look of permanent dandruff? Krulwich writes: Still, the powdering was a chore involving a robe to protect clothes, a cone to protect the face and sometimes special bellows to puff the powder evenly. So Washington could have been fashion-forward in his military simplicity. By the late 18th century, wigs were starting to go out of style. It may also have been the fashion in America to wear less elaborate wig styles, if one wore a wig at all. With charming illustrations, artist Wendy MacNaughton brings to life Washington’s routine - the gathering, enthusiastic yank back to try and broaden the forehead, fluffing of the hair on the side and the powdering.Įven if Washington didn’t wear a wig - as some of his contemporaries sported - he did powder his hair to get that white look. It was a military style called a queue, "the 18th-century equivalent of a marine buzz cut," Krulwich writes. The style he favored wasn’t fancy, though it may appear so to modern eyes. But a project out of the University of Virginia called The Papers of George Washington also confirms that the first president’s natural hair color was light brown. ![]() McRae, was painted in 1860, long after Washington’s death in 1799. The painting, The Courtship of Washington by John C. There’s a painting of him as a young man, with Martha and her two children, that shows his hair as reddish brown, which Chernow says was his true color. What’s more (though you probably already guessed this), he wasn’t white-haired. All of it-the pigtail, the poofy part in the back, that roll of perfect curls near his neck. At National Geographic, Robert Krulwich writes that he was stunned to learn this fact from Ron Chernow’s book Washington: A Life. It was pulled back from his forehead and puffy on the sides, colored grey-white perhaps like many wigs of the day. Probably every powder-wearing guy in the 1760s knew the secret, but after a couple of centuries, whatever Washington did to stay spotless is lost to us.George Washington’s hairstyle is iconic and simple enough that most Americans can probably recall it in an instant - or they can at least refresh their memory by pulling out a dollar bill or a quarter. As for keeping the powder off one’s shoulders, how Washington did that-if he did do that-nobody could tell me. ( Editor’s Note: One of our readers, Mike Whybark, shared a painting that makes me wonder … Maybe his shoulders did look a little snowed-on.) Myers, the wig scholar, says that’s why Washington bunched his ponytail into a silk bag, to keep from leaving a white windshield wiper splay of powder on his back when he was dancing with the ladies (which he liked to do). So if Washington liked dark clothes, how’d he keep the powder from showing? The man would have been covered in dandruff-like sprinkles. ![]() When he appeared at the first Continental Congress, he was the only important delegate to wear a military costume, choosing, Chernow writes, the “blue uniforms with buff facings and white stockings” of the Virginia citizen militia while adding his own “silk sash, gorgets, epaulettes.” Later, he’s described dancing at balls in black velvet. Washington was a careful, self-conscious dresser.
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