<img height="1" width="1" style="display:none" src="https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=192888919167017&amp;ev=PageView&amp;noscript=1">
Thursday, March 28, 2024
March 28, 2024

Linkedin Pinterest

Creator of beehive hairdo dies at 98

Conical style was phenomenon during the 1960s

By CARYN ROUSSEAU, Associated Press
Published: June 15, 2016, 6:00am
2 Photos
Retired hairstylist Margaret Vinci Heldt, poses for a photo in 2011 at her apartment in Elmhurst, Ill., with a photo of a model with a &quot;beehive&quot; hairdo from the February 1960 edition of Modern Beauty Shop magazine. Heldt, who became a hairstyling industry celebrity after she created the famous beehive hairdo in 1960, has died at age 98. Ahlgrim Funeral Home said Monday that Heldt died Friday at a senior living community.
Retired hairstylist Margaret Vinci Heldt, poses for a photo in 2011 at her apartment in Elmhurst, Ill., with a photo of a model with a "beehive" hairdo from the February 1960 edition of Modern Beauty Shop magazine. Heldt, who became a hairstyling industry celebrity after she created the famous beehive hairdo in 1960, has died at age 98. Ahlgrim Funeral Home said Monday that Heldt died Friday at a senior living community. (AP Photo/Caryn Rousseau File) Photo Gallery

CHICAGO — Margaret Vinci Heldt, who became a hairstyling celebrity after she created the famous beehive hairdo in 1960, has died at age 98.

Ahlgrim Funeral Home in the Chicago suburb of Elmhurst said Monday that Heldt died Friday at a senior living community.

The beehive — a tall, conical woman’s hairstyle — became a cultural phenomenon during the 1960s and evolved into a style worn for decades as Hollywood’s starlets walked red carpets. Heldt created it on the request of a hairstyling magazine that published images of it in February 1960 and called it “the beehive” because it resembles the shape of a traditional hive.

“I have lived a charmed life,” Heldt said in a 2011 interview. “The opportunities opened to me and I said, ‘Now it’s up to me. I have to make it work.’ ”

Heldt said the inspiration for the hairstyle came from a little black velvet hat, shaped like a small bump and lined inside with red lace. Heldt went downstairs to her family room one night while her family was sleeping and started working with hair atop a mannequin head.

The magazine article described the hairdo as a “tall wrap-around crown, creating a circular silhouette with high-rise accents.” Over the years, it was worn by cultural icons including Amy Winehouse, Audrey Hepburn and Marge Simpson.

Heldt grew up in Chicago and loved hair as a child. She won a beauty school scholarship in high school, but her family couldn’t afford to buy her a hair switch — a piece of fabric with long hair attached so students could practice — so she cut her mother’s long hair into a short bob and sewed that onto burlap to use in class. She passed the state board exam in 1935.

Heldt opened her own salon — Margaret Vinci Coiffures — on Michigan Avenue in 1950. She won the National Coiffure Championship in 1954.

The trade group Cosmetologists Chicago named a scholarship for Heldt for creativity in hairdressing.

Loading...