Co-Sponsored by Salmagundi Club, Coffee House Club, Merchant’s House Museum, and Victorian Society NY

Elizabeth L. Block, art and cultural historian, and Senior Editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, visits to discuss her new book, Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing, with Village Preservation’s Director of Programming, William Roka.

In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant it could affect one’s place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce. In Beyond Vanity, Elizabeth L. Block expands the nascent field of hair studies by restoring women’s hair as a cultural site of meaning in the early United States. With a special focus on the places and spaces in which the industry operated, Block argues that the importance of hair has been overlooked due to its ephemerality as well as its misguided association with frivolity and triviality. As Block clarifies, hairdressing was anything but frivolous.

Block will touch upon how our neighborhoods contributed to the development of hairdressing at famed hotels and department stores such as James McCreery & Co.

Elizabeth L. Block, art and cultural historian, and Senior Editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, visits to discuss her new book, Beyond Vanity: The History and Power of Hairdressing, with Village Preservation’s Director of Programming, William Roka.

In the nineteenth century, the complex cultural meaning of hair was not only significant it could affect one’s place in society. After the Civil War, hairdressing was a growing profession and the hair industry a mainstay of local, national, and international commerce. In Beyond Vanity, Elizabeth L. Block expands the nascent field of hair studies by restoring women’s hair as a cultural site of meaning in the early United States. With a special focus on the places and spaces in which the industry operated, Block argues that the importance of hair has been overlooked due to its ephemerality as well as its misguided association with frivolity and triviality. As Block clarifies, hairdressing was anything but frivolous.