I know there are only a handful or two of you out there who have read All Men of Genius, but for those of you who have, and those of you who will, I’m incredibly excited to tell you about a new feature coming to my webpage this summer: Fiona’s Hair Salon! Fiona is a character in All Men of Genius who shows a real flair with ladies tresses. She creates and names many hairstyles, ranging from beautifully Victorian to completely outrageous. I’m lucky enough to have a wonderful friend named Aire, who works at Hilde’s Salon Vienna in Hanover, New Hampshire. Besides being an amazing hairdresser, she is also a fantastic artist and will be doing sketches of the various styles Fiona mentions in the book.
I derived many of the styles names from Victorian slang, so the Hair Salon won’t just be amazing sketches of Steampunk Hairstyles that Aire can actually do for you, but they’ll be an interesting look at history and language. Furthermore, Aire is going to tell me about her inspiration and ideas when designing the styles, which will offer us a really interesting look at the history of hairstyling.
Aire has shown me just three sketches so far, but I’d love to share them with you:
This style is called “The Downy Dahlia”
In fact, I was so excited by this project that I came up with many more hairstyle names that aren’t even in the book, such as this one: The Betty Bun. A Betty was Victorian slang for a lockpick, if you were speaking to the right people.
And this is Miss Laycock’s Crown. Miss Laycock was slang for, well, lady-parts. I adore the outrageousness of this hairstyle. Aire told me she was inspired by a particular sort of hairstyle that virgin geishas would wear in Japan.
And that’s just a taste. There will be many more coming this summer. So keep an eye out for it; Fiona’s Hair Salon, coming soon.
