December 29 - Happy Birthday, Madame de Pompadour

Posted on December 29, 2021

Key points

This is an update of my post published on December 29, 2010:

One of the most influential French women of her day, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson was born on this day in 1721. She became Marquise de Pompadour and great companion of King Louis XV, she aided some folks to gain more elevated positions in court, and she was a patroness of such intellectuals as Voltaire and Diderot. We are mostly familiar with her name, however, for a hairdo named after her!

A pompadour is a hairstyle in which hair is brushed up from the forehead, often into a clip or a roll. It is often achieved with the use of hair gel (or even, back in the day, with wax), with a pad or hair appliance that produces a “bump,” or by ratting some hair and then combing other hair high and over.

The thing that is odd is that Madame de Pompadour herself never wore her hair this way, nor were the popular hairstyles of her time related to what we now call the pompadour!

But hairdos before and after Madame de Pompadour’s time included the vertical-enhanced styles – sometimes quite exaggerated, like this old-time style:

…and this modern style:

In more recent times, Pompadour hairstyles have been associated with women in the 1940s, men in the 1950s – including Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash – Italian and Mexican Americans, Japanese gangs, and Conan O’Brien!