I’ve just finished watching The Pillars of the Earth, and I’m working through Rome another time. In both, I noticed a handful of male characters–like Prior Philip and Titus Pullo–sporting haircuts that seem to be modern clipper cuts, rather than anything you could hope to do with a pair of scissors. Are these (admittedly minor) anachronisms, or did people in Roman/medieval times have some way to crop their hair that close? I’ve seen what seem to be hand-operated clippers here and there in the local antique malls, so I suppose it’s not unthinkable; just struck me as a bit odd, particularly with all the long-haired men in PotE.
(Posted to GQ because the underlying question is basically factual, though it was spurred by material better suited to CS. Feel free to move if more appropriate over there.)
A comb and a razor are quite capable of producing a short haircut, but it’s also the case that many productions just stick with the sort of hair that’s popular at the time. I haven’t watched either of these, and I’m no expert in historical hairstyles.
Hair clippers were invented in the mid- to late-1800’s, so accurate haircuts would not have been done with clippers.
However, both scissors and shears were used for centuries before that. And I’m not sure how you could tell the difference between a similar haircut done using these.
I’ve gotten pretty much the same (short-ish) haircut for the last five years and sometimes they use clippers and sometimes they just use scissors. It’s pretty much impossible to tell which is which. I’m trying to think of hairstyles that can only be had with the use of electric clippers and I can’t think of any. Clippers just make it easier.
Maybe those Vanilla-Ice-style lines buzzed into the hair necessitate clippers. But what else?
Consider my ignorance fought. I’ve never personally gotten a haircut as short as one of Pullo’s shorter cuts without the barber using clippers, so I just foolishly assumed it couldn’t be done.
