Elizabethan use of padding: Padding was used to create a precise shape to the hair. It was achieved by using rats of hair shaped to the way the stylist wanted, to be able to wrap the hair around as a base to a hair style. Middle and upper class women had very elaborate hairstyles and tended to use padding to create extreme shapes within the hair. This can be shown in the pictures above. Some of the styles are smooth and the hair has just been wrapped around the rat, however others have used a curling or frizzing technique to create texture and more volume and then applied the rat to the hair to create a shape. An exampled of the padding technique can be found here in my 'Crimping, backcombing and padding' blogpost.


For the modern take on padding i have chosen to focus on the 'donut' as this is very popular today. A lot of high street stores stock this as it makes doing a neat bun 10x easier. This, i believe, is a modern take on padding similar to what the elizabethans would have tried to use. It creates a lot of volume and a very well structured shape to the hair. It can also be adapted depending on whether the hair is smooth, frizzy or curly. Donuts are made using a mesh material that allows pins to go through it to secure it in place on the head. However, if you do not have a donut you can easily make one by cutting off the closed end of a sock and rolling in to create a donut shape.