A Fascinating History 7: Georgian Puff

*GEORGIAN PUFF: 1789 Following the popularity of the Fontange, the Georgian puff is a similarly intended style, including multiple yards of fine silk fabrics like chiffon and gauze, stacked and puffed around a wire frame, that sometimes extended under the hair to hold it aloft like the headpiece. Textile grandeur was in fashion, and this headpiece was another display of monetary success in the merchant industry; the more luxurious and finely-woven fabrics you could display, the better your social position. These puffs also featured ribbons flowing from the back of the headpiece, called “suivez-moi-jeune-homme,” or, in English, “Follow me young man,” that in the second half of the nineteenth century denoted particular-colored ribbons that flowed down from a hat onto the exposed neck of the woman,” (Lehmann, Fashion as Translation, 166).