Dangerous Minds and Cultura Inquieta have curated galleries of bizarre early hairdryers, including the world’s first in 1888 (above), from a beauty salon in France owned by Alexandre Godefroy that attached to a pipe for a chimney or a gas stove and blew hot air through a giant alien-looking metal helmet. Below, other quirky hot-air contraptions from throughout the decades that make me gag just looking at them.
Via DM:
Some of these space-aged looking gizmos date as far back as the early 1920s and could be found in public bath houses. In 1930, German hair care company Wella debuted a motorized dryer that looked like it was straight out of a scene from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (pictured below). Others are just too wacky for words but as a girl with long hair—I get it. Before the advent of the hair dryer women would dry their hair by a fire (yikes!) or just let it dry on its own. In the words of those Virginia Slim ads “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” when it comes to hair maintenance. Lots of images of far-out looking hair dryers of yesteryear follow.
A woman using a hair dryer in a public bathhouse, early 1900s.
1920s
London 1929
Wella’s first motorized hair dryer from 1930.
