This 1920s French Hood Ornament May Have Inspired Star Wars’ Princess Leia’s Iconic Hair

Generally, we don’t do a lot of hair-related stories here at the Autopian. The intersection between cars and hair is generally pretty limited, mostly relating to how to best get used motor oil out of your scalp after you accidentally keep your head too close to the drain plug when changing oil, or how Mercedes-Benz used to use boar’s hair oil filters on their cars. Maybe horsehair in seat padding, too. But I saw something recently in a 1975 issue of the wonderful and now-defunct Automobile Quarterly that got me thinking about some very well-known hair. I think you’ll see why, because this is arguably some of the most famous hair in all of pop culture.

The hair in question is Carrie Fisher’s twin-side-bialy-style hair worn when she played Princess Leia in the widly famous 1977 movie Star Wars. If you don’t know what I’m talking about then you’re either lying or have just been unfrozen from your cryo-pod that you entered in 1959 as part of a DARPA experiment. In that case, welcome to modernity! It’s both not as bad as you think and much, much worse!

What I saw in this Volume 18, number 8 edition of Automobile Quarterly was this photograph of a 1920s-era mascot or hood ornament, featuring a nearly-nude dancing female figure, draped in a sheet that wraps sinuously around her as she balances, precariously, on one foot, or, really, five tip-toes.

But, look at the hair. If there’s anyone who doesn’t immediately think of Princess Leia, then, damn, I hope they enjoyed their Amish upbringing.

Now, if we research a bit about the origins of Leia’s iconic hair, there are a couple of explanations, though none is really definitive. The one that seems like it would be definitive because it comes from George Lucas himself, is this one:

“In the 1977 film, I was working very hard to create something different that wasn’t fashion, so I went with a kind of Southwestern Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look, which is what that is. The buns are basically from turn-of-the-century Mexico. “

The problem with this explanation is that experts on Mexican Revolution soldaderas do not believe this sort of double-danish hair was actually worn by the women involved, and it may be that George Lucas was just coming up with something that sounded good. People who do know things about historic hairstyles have noted that unmarried Hopi Native American women of Arizona did wear their hair in a style somewhat like this; and while this style definitely resembles Princess Leia’s hair, there’s no evidence that George Lucas was aware of or used these women as an inspiration.

This copy of Automobile Quarterly came out in 1975, and Lucas started production on Star Wars in 1975 as well. Also remember the movie George Lucas made right before Star Wars was 1973’s American Graffiti, a movie that reveals Lucas’ intense interest in cars. Here, look at the trailer:

The man liked cars. A lot. All I’m wondering is what feels more likely for George Lucas to have seen sometime in 1975: old photographs of unmarried Hopi women or a copy of Automobile Quarterly? I mean, the Hopi theory is just speculation based on the visual look of the hair; is the idea that the iconic hair was based instead on an old hood ornament really any more far-fetched?

I don’t really know how much I believe this or not, but I like to speculate. Also, I’d like to talk about the cover image on this AQ issue, too:

Now, the cover image’s source isn’t attributed, but it looks to me like an image drawn in the 1820s to 1830s, and I suspect it may be from the same artist/cartoonist who drew this cartoon from a British magazine of some sort (I thought it might be Punch but that publication started in 1841, and I think this is about 20 years earlier):

The very distinctive vertical intestinal-looking tubes of what the artist imagines a steam boiler/steam engine to look like can be seen, in almost the exact same form, up there in those many steam cars in the cartoon above. So I feel pretty sure these are both the work of the same cartoonist, arguably the first cartoonist to really feature automobiles in their work.

(Boy, am I a dummy. I had identified the artist at Henry Aiken when I wrote about this ten years ago, but I seem to have forgotten! But it’s Aiken, from a series called The Progress of Steam, Alken’s Illustration of Modern Prophecy, an 1828-1829 series that focused on the possibilities of a coming age of steam travel. The results were remarkably visionary!)

The reason I included the AQ cover cartoon is because there’s a sort of early hood ornament on the steam car there, even if there isn’t really a hood, as such:

I think the editors of AQ may have found the earliest representation of a hood ornament/mascot on a motor vehicle, or at least the depiction of one, in this image. It appears to be some sort of bird, chubby and with stubby wings. A quail, maybe?

There are other interesting details on that steam car; are those half-leaf springs arching forward there, midway up the rear wheel, and with an unconnected forward end, or are they something else? Is that a sort of throttle or gearshift the driver is holding in his hand nearest the viewer? Why isn’t that guy hanging onto the smokestack getting his forearm burned?

Between the possible Princess Leia hair inspiration and this remarkably prescient hood ornament drawing, this old 1975 Automobile Quarterly gives and gives and gives.

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