Will a little dab truly do me?

I am not the vainest person in the world, but I've spent a good 35 years now battling my hair.

I'm convinced that easily 95 percent of the world's population would change their hair if they could. Moptops wish they had straight hair. Those with straight hair jump through hoops to make it curly. Those with fine hair wish they had a mane. Those with thick unruly hair would give anything to just be able to easily run their fingers through it (or have someone else do it).

At one point in my life, I wished for a slightly receding hairline. I realize that seems equivalent to pining for a paunch and an enlarged prostate (both of which I've also acquired), but my hair tended to fall forward in those days, and I wanted it to sweep back away from my forehead. A receded hairline would solve that problem, I reckoned, and I was right.

Of course, the trick is how to quash the advance of an ever-widening forehead, once it's on the march. That I've not solved.

I'm also intrigued by the hair styles I see in old movies (surprise, surprise -- what doesn't intrigue me in old movies, longtime readers are no doubt asking), and more specifically, what goop, goo, or grease were they using in those days to tame their locks, and just how uninviting did it make their hair to potential paramours?

The Twenties and early Thirties find lots of very slick hair, plastered as close to the head as possible. I can't believe it was possible to achieve that effect and not have one's hair be far too gooey or greasy to touch.

But in late Thirties and Forties, while the hair was kept tidy and obviously had some sort of grooming product in it, it often appears as if it might be reasonably pleasant to tousle and tease.

Now, we've got the hit show (well, by cable standards, anyway) Mad Men, which is set at the turn of the 1960s, and I can't help but wonder what the show's makeup people are using to groom the actors hair. The lead actor, Jon Hamm, looks so good on the show in his finely tailored suits and sharp hair that he should inform his agent that he will henceforth consider no projects that are set post-1960.

Of course, I remember the grooming products of the early Sixties. We always had some Vitalis in the house and I think Brylcreem came into play occasionally, too. My grandfather, especially, swore by Vitalis, applying it liberally to my head one afternoon in junior high when I was suffering something of a meltdown over a bad hair day (I was ahead of my time).

I looked horrendous, but I couldn't say anything about it to my grandfather, whom I loved dearly.

But oddly enough, as I now revisit some of the old hair tonics and cremes, I find that Vitalis is one of the best of the bunch, when used in moderation. It leaves one's hair softer and less unruly, but still pleasant to the touch (or says Flo).

Brylcreem, on the other hand, has a tacky quality that I can't quite get past (I think it's the paraffin it contains).

But I'm always on the lookout in drugstores for weird old hair products that might offer a cheap trip back in time to see how it was done back in the day.

Flo and I were recently shopping at an Eckerd Drug that opened not so long ago in our neighborhood, and oddly enough, it proved to be a treasure trove of strange and unfamiliar toiletries, not just hair groomers but the entire gamut, many of them with Spanish names and product info.

I took a chance on a pair of products -- Barry's Tricopherous ("Sounds like the name of a dinosaur," Flo quipped, and she's right), which apparently dates back to the first half of the 19th century (well, not this particular bottle, of course) and is currently manufactured by Lanman and Kemp, a concern that also dates back to the 1800s, and a sort of pomade called Halka, which is manufactured in Puerto Rico and is touted on the label as being a "solid brilliantine."

I've been loath to try the Halka, because there's just no way it won't be a sticky mess in my hair -- it's as thick as vegetable shortening. I'll wait till some night that Flo and I are hitting the town in fully vintage attire before risking it.

But I did try the Tricopherous, and I liked it fine. Like Vitalis, it's primarily alcohol (which is said be a drying agent on hair -- not a good thing), but it's purple in color, left even less of a greasy feel to my hair, and had a more pungent, which is not to say unpleasant, scent than the Big V.

I love trying out these long-forgotten products and wondering why they're even still made. With the dozens of current hair care products on the market today, who besides me is buying these ancient formulas?

Posted by brett at 01:38 PM | TrackBack