In this new piece, historian Nadege Forde-Vidal explores A day in the life of Afro-French hairdresser & businessman Jean Baptiste Gilbert.

In celebration of the recent party season, we thought we would take a closer look at the day to day life of Jean Baptiste Gilbert and his family in the late 1700s. Gilbert, an Afro-French hairdresser and businessman, brought French hair fashion to the ‘Ton’ via the Duchess of Devonshire, Georgiana Cavendish, and dominated the scene for over a decade.

The art of dressing a lady’s hair is a free art like poetry, painting, or sculpture. By means of the talents we possess, we bestow new charms on the beauty of which the poets sing.

Marie Antoinette’s Head: The Royal Hairdresser by Will Bashor

Gilbert may have come to London to benefit from the influence of French fashions in England in a less crowded market. He was not the only French professional employed by the Devonshires. There was also a French chef and French confectioner who were both highly paid.

Gilbert dressed Duchess Georgiana’s hair and made her hats for over a decade. He ran his own hairdressing school and, once the style for big hair had waned, he turned his hand to hat making, opening a Millinery shop in Jermyn Street.

Gilbert was not a servant, he was a professional hired for services which were in high demand. It seems likely that Georgiana was not his only influential client. His skill and expertise were reflected in his pay, and his creativity reflected in his huge expenses!

Monsieur Leonard, superstar hairdresser of Marie Antoinette, claimed to have invented the tall hairstyle known as the ‘pouf’. First worn in April 1774 by the Duchess of Chartres, it was popularised shortly after by Marie-Antoinette, and is modelled above by Duchess Georgiana Cavendish.

Jean Baptiste’s Daily Routine

For most household servants the average 16 hr working day would begin at dawn with laborious and demanding chores. For those upstairs, the day was broken into two parts – morning (the part of the day before dinner) and evening. The time between rising and breakfast at 10am was spent on various private pursuits and personal care. Women would change their dresses for dinner, marking the evening portion of the day.

Gilbert’s skills would only have been required in the morning if Georgiana had specific formal events planned for the day – visits to friends, public appearances in support of various causes and the like. He would have dressed her hair mostly in the evenings before dinner, preparing her for the theatre, royal balls and private parties she attended. This allowed Gilbert some freedom during the day to pursue his other business interests.

Gilbert would have spent a good few hours in the privacy of the Duchess’s dressing room teasing the thickly-powdered hair away from her face and then arranging it high on her head. Then wrapping it around a wire frame and adding false hair – curled and crimped with various utensils – sometimes made of horsehair or sheep’s wool. Lastly, the adornments – diamond jewellery, ropes of pearls, gauze, lace, ribbons, pompoms, ostrich and peacock feathers, bows, rosettes, butterflies, figurines, and all manner of other props. The creative flow was inexhaustible and costly.

Professional hairdressers like Gilbert were often paid to accompany clients on trips away, to ensure they remained presentable and fashionable at all times. A letter written by Georgiana from Warley Camp, Essex in October 1779 tells us that Gilbert was with her, but very unwell and being attended to by a doctor, at no small expense.

But what about Gilbert’s home life? How did his wife and family feel about him spending time away? What was it like living in St James, one of the most expensive and fashionable parts of London? What was life like for a wealthy family of African heritage in this affluent area?

Monsieur Baptiste Gilbert, Ladies Hair-dresser, from Paris, begs leave to acquaint the nobility and gentry, that he is to be spake with at Mr Thomas Clark’s Cheesemonger, Clarges Street, Piccadilly; at which place he has established a school for the instruction of those who wished to learn all the various methods he has peculiar to himself of decorating and dressing ladies Hair in the greatest perfection and in the present taste.

(Advertisements and Notices. Public Advertiser, 12 Feb. 1779)

Gilbert’s hairdressing school was located in Clarges Street, two streets away from Devonshire House, at Thomas Clark’s Cheesemonger’s. Occupying a room above another shop suggests that Gilbert taught hairdressing on an ad-hoc basis, working around his private clients. He relocated to Air Street around 1779. That he was able to purchase and insure this property shows he made a more than comfortable living.

Gilbert appears to have closed his hairdressing school at some point before 1781 when he opened a new venture in nearby Jermyn Street. Here Gilbert started a millinery business in partnership with John Helsa, a French trimmings maker, and the pair employed Mrs Roget as forewoman to manage the business and serve customers on a daily basis (Dr Hannah Wallace).

Gilbert had recently become a father to a baby boy named after himself.

Gilbert’s millinery shop remained in Jermyn Street throughout the 1780s and it appears that Gilbert may have returned to France on more than one occasion. On the 26th September 1788 an advert from ‘Messrs. Gilbert and Co.’ appeared in The World, and noted that:

 Mr. Gilbert is gone to Paris, on purpose to provide the most elegant and newest articles in their line.

The Jermyn Street partnership appears to have ceased around 1791 – the same year that Gilbert’s wife Mary tragically died of smallpox. Gilbert remained in the area with his son, and remarried. He and his new wife Catherine bore two more sons – Charles Georges, and Henry John in 1793. Life for Catharine must have been quite a challenge with three young boys.

Young Wodaabe men, with elaborate make-up, feathers and other adornments, perform dances and songs to impress marriageable women. Wodaabe clans join for the week-long ‘Gerewol’ where the young men’s beauty and skills are judged by young women.

A sculptural piece reflecting Jean Baptiste Gilbert’s creative influences, entitled “Ancestral Strands”, is now a permanent feature of Chiswick House. The artwork was fashioned by Start Easy community group in collaboration with artist Jaixia Blue using a variety of materials to emulate and fuse together quintessential European/Georgian and traditional African hairstyles.

Hair connects us all, it is an art form which can represent centuries of stories and cultural exchange.

Jaixia Blue

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Hannah Wallace for her invaluable research into Jean Baptiste Gilbert which has contributed to the content of this blog. Read more here.

• Launched in 2021, Black Chiswick through History is an ongoing community research project, working in collaboration with local community groups, young people, historians and artists. Through it, we look more deeply at the history of Chiswick House & Gardens, drawing out stories that connect us to Black history, on both a local and a national/global level.
• A digital timeline, created by Year 10 students at Chiswick School, shows how the lives of three men of African heritage who lived and/or worked at Chiswick House in the 18th century, Joseph Casar, James Cumberlidge and Jean-Baptiste Gilbert, intersected with local, national and global events of their time.