Emerging from the past: Hair wreaths

Festivals, weddings, sitting in the garden making daisy chains... What's summer without a floral hair wreath? But there's more inspiration aside from the average Coachella street style shot. Here are some, perhaps unexpected, style icons. 

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Dionysus Once upon a time in Ancient Greece the hair wreath was born. Before the evolution of metalwork, people adorned their heads with flowers and foliage arranged into garlands. Over time, these snippets of nature developed their own emblematic meaning. The victorious were crowned with laurel and newly-weds with myrtle.  Dionysus, the Greek god of wine and festivity, is recognisable for his ivy crown. Such a simple form of vegetation but worn with such pride. Plus, according to legend, it was he who invented the diadem so without him who knows where the queen of all head wear would be. Queen Victoria A wreath that smells as sweet as it looks. It was Queen Victoria who began the notion of wearing flowers in the hair at weddings. During her marriage to Prince Albert in 1840, orange blossoms made from white porcelain were fixed to a black velvet band around her head, accompanied by green enameled oranges and gold leaves- Sprays of real orange blossom also added. Throughout the Victorian era brides continued to wear orange blossom crowns and, when the flower was in short supply or out of season, they would use wax replicas instead, everlasting like Victoria's version which is just as relevant today.

The Pre-Raphaelites.

What is more suitable for wearable florals than long dreamy hair in ravishing waves of red or gracefully flowing browns? Pre-Raphaelite women were usually depicted by artists as being set in a location of nature and often they had flowers in their hair.
Take exhibit A: Perdita. In Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys' painting, The Winter's Tale character is accessorizing with a necklace of leaves and a halo of delicate blooms around her head. Growing up in Bohemia, a rural place of pleasantness and positivity, what else would she wear?

Then there's exhibit B: Ophelia. Pre-Raphaelite painter John William Waterhouse is known for his series of paintings based on the Hamlet character with his most famous being his 1894 one, a representation of her before the drowning in the lake. "There with fantastic garlands did she come. Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies" said Queen Gertrude in the play, describing them as "weedy trophies". Waterhouse's painting sees her putting the likes of these flowers in her hair and why not? If you're going to die you might as well die in style.

The Woodstock hippies

Nothing says 'I'm at a festival and in harmony with my surroundings' like a flower headband. Originating in the 1960s when women would wear fresh flowers in their hair, the natural beauty symbolic in a world of war-induced ugliness, the accessory lives on as a 'modern hippy' necessity.