What I remember about my mother’s 1960s hairstyle was that it took a lot of work. There was the backcombing, by which you combed your hair straight up and then combed it back towards your scalp again, creating a tangled mass beneath the layer that was smoothed over it to give it the bouffant look. There were the curlers to give it body, as her hair was naturally very straight. She’d sleep in her curlers or use a sit-under hairdryer – that was a big purchase. It was also a big deal when she got a curling iron. And the hairspray! I don’t know if she matched the scent of her hairspray to her Chanel No. 5 cologne with the same attention that she paid to matching the colours of her clothes. I’ve always gone with simple easy hairstyles in protest. But she was a beautiful woman, and this is what beautiful women did. She obviously considered the result worthy of a rare formal portrait.

Somewhere in the mid 1960s