Le Flou-Flou

The plan today was to write about some of the research that I'm doing for my NaNoWriMo novel, which is set in 1896 in Brooklyn and New York City. However, I'll be getting to more research after I hit the 50,000 word mark. I hope to make it to that point within a week or so - thanks to writing masses at first and then plugging away every day since then. Though I must tell you I am looking forward to slowing down and working on some of the descriptive stuff. I just need to get Eleanor (the amateur detective) out of her final dangerous incident, and then wrap things up. I will still have a lot of work to do so am going to use the rest of November to motivate myself. In previous years I would stop and take the next 11 months off so it will be best to just keep on going.

Anyway, this post is not about NYC mass transit in 1896 or Green-Wood or Charlotte Canda (a NYC girl who died in a carriage accident in 1843 and is a partial inspiration for the title). It is, as you see above, about Le Flou-Flou. I'll be writing about mass transit, Green-Wood and Charlotte later in the month (hence no links about Charlotte, they will go in her post). But this post is, as you see, about Le Flou-Flou.

Le Flou-Flou is a device for putting ribbons in your hair. Flou-flou was a French for "rustling" and I suppose that is what your beribboned curls would do.

The ad for Le Flou-Flou is from the NYPL Picture Collection Online. It is from an 1896 Le Figaro magazine. There is a bigger image there if you'd like to take a look at the device, which looks like a modern curling iron.