Blog Archives November 2016: A Month of Quiet Beginnings in Vintage Hair Accessories
When I first opened the November 2016 folder of this blog’s archive, I expected a few scattered notes—perhaps a handful of photographs taken in poor light and a list of half-formed thoughts about Edwardian combs. What I found instead was a surprisingly complete record of a collector’s early, earnest attempts to understand what makes a vintage hair accessory worth keeping, wearing, and passing on. The posts from that month are short, often no more than three hundred words, but they carry a focused energy that later, more polished entries sometimes lack. November 2016 was the month this blog learned to look carefully at the small things.
The first post, dated the 2nd, describes a single tortoiseshell hairpin found at a car boot sale near Bath. The writer—my earlier self—spent an entire paragraph on the colour: not the uniform amber of modern imitation tortoiseshell, but a mottled, almost translucent brown that shifted from honey to dark molasses depending on the light. That attention to material detail became a hallmark of everything that followed. The pin itself was unremarkable in shape—a simple straight prong with a rounded head—but the post lingers on the way the surface felt under a fingertip, smooth and slightly warm, as if it had absorbed decades of body heat. It is the kind of observation that only comes from holding an object for a long time, turning it over, and letting it speak.
A Practical Lesson in Dating Hair Accessories
Later that same week, a second entry tackled something I had been avoiding: how to tell the difference between a genuine Victorian hair comb and a well-made 1920s revival piece. The November 2016 post did not offer a neat checklist. Instead, it walked through a single example—a small dress comb with a scalloped top and five teeth—and compared it against known reference images from museum catalogues. The key insight, which I still use today, was about the teeth themselves. Victorian combs, particularly those made between 1850 and 1880, tend to have teeth that taper very slightly from base to tip, with rounded ends that feel almost polished. Later combs, especially those from the 1920s revival, often have teeth that are more uniform in width and cut at a sharper angle, because they were machine-sawn rather than hand-filed. That single detail opened a door. Once you start looking at teeth, you cannot stop.
The archive also contains a short, uncharacteristically personal entry about a bakelite bangle that was not a hair accessory at all. The writer admitted to being distracted by a piece of jewellery that shared the same shelf at a flea market, and the post meanders into a reflection on how collecting hair accessories inevitably pulls you into adjacent worlds—hatpins, dress clips, collar pins, even the occasional shoe buckle. I left that post in the archive because it captures something true about the way collections grow: they rarely stay inside tidy categories.
The Straight Jacket Comb: A First Mention
One of the most significant entries from November 2016 is barely a paragraph long. It describes a comb the writer found in a box lot at a house clearance in Kent: a rigid, almost severe-looking piece with a high, solid back and closely set teeth. The post calls it “a straight jacket comb” and notes that it felt uncomfortable to hold, let alone wear. That comb later became the subject of a much longer, more detailed article—The Straight Jacket Comb: A Century of British Style in One Accessory—but the seed was planted in those few lines written on a rainy November afternoon. The original post mentions the comb’s unusual weight, the way the celluloid had yellowed unevenly, and a faint floral pattern that was almost invisible except under direct sunlight. It is a reminder that the best articles often begin as casual observations scribbled down before they slip away.
Materials and Techniques in the November Light
The archive also includes a practical how-to entry that I had completely forgotten. Titled “Cleaning a Silver Hairpin Without Losing the Patina,” it runs through a method using warm water, a drop of mild dish soap, and a very soft toothbrush. The key warning, repeated twice, is never to use silver dip or abrasive cloths on vintage pieces, because the chemical reaction can strip the dark oxidation from the recessed detailing, leaving the pin looking flat and new. The post recommends instead a gentle rub with a jeweller’s cloth on the high points only, letting the crevices keep their aged character. That advice has saved at least a dozen of my own pieces from overzealous restoration.
Another entry, from the 19th of November, is a list of five things to check before buying a vintage hair accessory at a market. It is practical to the point of being blunt: check for cracks by holding the piece up to a bright light, run a fingernail along the teeth of a comb to feel for splinters, smell the item for any chemical odour that might indicate unstable celluloid, ask the seller if the piece was stored in a damp environment, and always carry a small cloth in your bag to wrap fragile finds. That last tip came from personal experience—the writer had bought a delicate Edwardian side comb at a fair in Brighton, wrapped it in newspaper, and watched it snap in half before reaching the train station. The post ends with a sentence that still makes me smile: “A broken comb is a sad thing, but a broken comb you paid twelve pounds for is a lesson.”
Combining Vintage Accessories with a Modern Wardrobe
November 2016 also contains the blog’s first attempt at addressing how to wear vintage hair accessories today. It is a short entry, barely two paragraphs, but it introduces a principle that has guided every style post since: let the accessory lead the outfit. The writer describes wearing a simple black wool dress with a single 1950s tortoiseshell banana clip swept low at the nape of the neck. The rest of the look was deliberately plain—no jewellery, no scarf, no patterned tights—so that the clip became the focal point. That approach, which the post calls “one piece, full attention,” remains the most reliable way to integrate a vintage hair accessory into a contemporary outfit without looking like you are wearing a costume. The archive entry is too short to be a guide, but it contains the seed of a philosophy that later grew into longer articles on the same subject.
What the Archive Does Not Tell Us
Reading through the November 2016 posts, I am struck by what is missing. There are no photographs of the writer wearing the accessories, no measurements or weight records, no notes about provenance beyond the name of the town or market where each piece was found. The early archive is a record of looking, not of documenting. It asks questions—What is this made of? How old is it? Why does it feel this way?—but it does not always answer them. That incompleteness is part of its charm. These are the notes of someone who was still learning, still touching each piece for the first time, still unsure whether this hobby would become a lasting passion or a passing curiosity. Eleven years later, the answer is clear, but November 2016 preserves the moment before certainty set in.
For anyone starting their own collection, or simply curious about the quiet beginnings of this blog, the November 2016 archive offers a honest look at the early stages of a collector’s education. It is not polished, it is not comprehensive, and it certainly does not have the production value of later posts. But it has something that is hard to replicate: the excitement of discovering that a small, inexpensive object can hold a century of stories. If you find yourself drawn to that kind of discovery, you might also enjoy All a Girl Really Wants: Vintage Hair Accessories and a Lot More, which picks up where these early notes left off and expands them into a fuller conversation about why we collect, wear, and treasure these pieces. The November 2016 archive is where that conversation started, and it deserves to be remembered not as a finished work, but as the first careful step into a much larger world.