Give or take a little "dippty-do", the classic Beehive hairdo now made famous by Marge Simpson and other A-list celebs on the red carpet is 50 years old. Ever wonder where the Beehive got its sting (start) ?
Head back in time to more than 50 years to Margaret Vinci Heldt's salon on Chicago's ritzy Michigan Avenue.
Margaret says Modern Beauty Shop magazine (now Modern Salon) was looking for a new design, something different to feature in its February 1960 issue. She came up with the beehive.
"I went home and I thought, What am I going to do that hasn't done before?" Heldt says in an interview at her apartment in a suburban Chicago retirement community, scrapbooks filled with pictures of her hair designs stacked near the couch.
Inspiration came to her in a little black velvet hat, shaped like a small bump and lined on the inside with red lace. Heldt went downstairs to her family room one night while her family was sleeping. She put on a little music and started working with hair atop a mannequin head.
"Before you know it something was coming out," she said. "And I thought, I like this."
It became what the magazine called "the beehive." Now more than a half-century later, Heldt is garnering accolades and attention. Today the hat sits atop a gold metallic hat box on Heldt's living room coffee table. The box reads "Lorraine's Footlight Hat Shop."
Source: CARYN ROUSSEAU Associated Press The Associated Press
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