Our Miss Brooks

Louise Brooks was perhaps the first Hollywood star to intermingle her acting talents with her daring do.  Other Hollywood stars had started fashion crazed - Mary Pickford with her sausage curls to name just one, but Brooks' hair was different and it started a revolution among the sytle conscious in the roaring twenties. With it, Brooks could be a girl, a lady and a woman, and sometimes all three at once.

Women's hair had been prized for its length and volume before the 1920s, but as the Jazz Age began to burn bright, short hair for women became the rage.  Brooks bob, which broke through at the crest of the maddess that was the 1920s, took that short hair fad and turned it into a frenzy.  No curl, all straight, with the only flourish being a semi curl that cut the cheeks beneath the facial bone.   And unless their customers had the exact type of hair as Brooks, the results were never quite what their clients expected.

In fact, the look was difficult to dupicate because of the hair straightening techniques of the day (which cooked the hair leaving it dry and crispy) so while many aspired to Brooks look, few, if any could pull it off then, and almost no one chooses to try it today.