Putting Up The "Do" Victorian Hair Styles 19th century. The French Revolution at the end of the 18th century had a great deal to do with bringing hair fashion back down to Earth. There was a return to the classical Greek hairstyles, with hair dressed closer to the head and fillets or bands of ribbon worn by women. Hairpins, clips, and tortoiseshell combs became popular hair ornaments. Wigs were rarely worn in the 19th century, and men once again wore facial hair in a wide range of styles--from mutton-chop sideburns to the walrus-style mustache. Treatments and cures for baldness were concocted of substances as varied as bear's grease, beef marrow, onion juice, butter, and flower water. They were sometimes such toxic substances as sulfur or mercury.   The most widely used hair preparations of the century were Macassar oil and brilliantine, whose functions were to give hair shine. In general, hair fashions changed faster as news traveled faster from one country, and even continent, to another. The simplicity of the smooth, center-parted styles worn by women in the Victorian era lasted until the 1870s, when the Parisian hairdresser Marcel Grateau created a new, natural-looking wave by turning a curling iron upside down. The Marcel wave remained popular for almost half a century and helped usher in a new era of women's waved and curled hairpieces, which were mixed with the natural hair. Another major innovation at the end of the 19th century was the invention in 1895 of the safety razor by an American, William Gillette. Barbers now concentrated on cutting hair and trimming beards and mustaches, and a new age of at-home grooming practices began.