History Of Hair Dye | History Of | Racked

As you can probably tell by my roots I'm one of the estimated 70 % of American women who die their hair, that's a pretty high number and it's probably only going to get higher, but hair coloring is actually tradition. That goes back nearly as far as humanity itself. Archeological evidence suggests that humans, in the Paleolithic period used iron oxide found in soil to dye their bodies and hair red ancient Egyptians would shave off their hair to turn it into wigs and then color them. Everything from black red gold, blue and green, using plant extracts like henna, saffron indigo and alfalfa. Ancient Greeks and Romans eventually figured out how to create permanent black hair dye using lead. As you can imagine, this was probably pretty toxic and eventually the Romans made their black dye by fermenting leeches and lead wine vessels slightly safer but way weirder. But there was an easier and more common way to call your hair back then, just by a wig Romans preferred wigs with black hair from India and blond hair from Germany, and sometimes even intertwine them. Prostitutes, however, were required to either dye their hair blonde or wear a blonde wig in order to signify that they were in fact sex workers that changed more than a thousand years later, when Venetian women who weren't prostitutes would lighten their hair by sitting out in the Sun, while their hair soaked in lye, which again is not a great thing for humans to be putting near their skin, it wasn't until 1863 that the English chemist, William Henry Perkin accidentally, invented the first modern non natural dye. He was actually attempting to make a malaria drug, but much of the benefit of the cosmetics industry. He synthesized a chemical that was both more vivid and more permanent than natural dyes. This led to the discovery of the molecule para phenylenediamine or PPD, which is still the main ingredient in most hair dyes. Today, by 1907, the man who would eventually become the founder of L'Oreal created the first synthetic dye specifically for hair, but at least one person was still using those dangerous recipes. The actress Jean Harlow, known for being the original blonde bombshell, wore a shade of whitish blonde that baffled hairdressers. No one could figure out how her stylist did it and it turns out that's because hers used a highly painful combination of peroxide ammonia soap flakes an actual Clorox bleach, which created what we today called platinum blonde. That combination may have been partly to blame for her death when she was just 26, but it wouldn't be long until women could finally color their hair themselves. In 1947, the German company Schwarzkopf sold the first at-home hair dye three years later. Another invention would change hair forever, Claire augmented, a dye that lightened hair without bleaching it and the marketing campaign that went along with it was just as important to the industry. The slogan simply asked: does she or doesn't she and it worked because at the time women still felt like they should be ashamed for dyeing her hair and Clairol promised that no one would ever find out, but today dyeing her hair is extremely common hair. That'S obviously died whether it's pastel, pink or mermaid, blue or whatever hair color trend. We'Re on now is so commonplace. It'S almost boring at this point, but who knows maybe soon we'll go back to using fermented leeches paraffin alene diamine, para phenylenediamine, paraffin, alene, diamine paraffin lean time, para fennely time!