Gibson Girl

The Gibson Girl style is one of the oddest and most ridiculous looking to modern viewers. However, it does lend the wearer a sophisticated look thanks to the inches it adds to a woman's head.

The pictures here are of me in a recent Gibson Girl do, and a pic of my mother and me many years ago. She is sporting a classic Gibson Girl poof, and I am wearing the style of little girls in the period: a braid with an enormous bow. Our clothes are circa 1908 reproductions.

Women of the period often used rolls around their heads under their hair to make the unmistakable poof. But we didn't do this. Teasing the hair also achieves the desired result, but if you have hair thick or coarse enough, it will poof on its own.

Directions: (without roller or teasing)
~bend forward so your hair hangs strait down to the floor
~gather it into a very loose ponytail on top of you head and stand up
~twist this hair into a bun on top of your head, making sure is is not so tight you loose the poof
~pin in place and then, if poof is not big enough, pull hair out of bun a little to create bigger poof

This works for any length of hair, and you just have to modify it for thin hair. To add rollers or tease, part your hair so it falls evenly around your head like a mop and apply rollers around your head to hold you hair in place here. Then wrap the hair back over the rollers to create bun. Do the same to tease.

This style takes a bit of practice and my directions may be no use at all. Just study pictures and go from there.