But for every woman looking for some curl, there’s another looking to lose hers. Marcel quickly became renowned for his iconic “Marcel wave” and had designed his own curling iron by 1890. Women’s beauty became a lucrative and salon-oriented industry in the late 19th century when Marcel Grateau opened the first successful salon for women in Paris in 1872. She was a school teacher from Indianapolis with quite a different story altogether, a woman forgotten by history. The woman who invented the straight iron wasn’t a Scottish heiress who was obsessed with “something different” at all. No historical record she had lived at all. Not only had no Lady Schofield filed a patent for a straightening iron ever in history, there was no record of her birth, marriage, or death. I talked to librarians in the British Library and genealogists in Scotland, where she was reported to be from.
![flat iron money flat iron money](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61jh+ZupO3L._SL160_.jpg)
There is absolutely no record of a Lady Jennifer Bell Schofield at all. The woman who invented the straight iron wasn’t a Scottish heiress who was obsessed with “something different” at all.īut the internet, of course, lies. The only “inventor” that actually seemed to invent anything is a Lady Jennifer Bell Schofield who, according to histories like the one on, was a Scottish heiress who invented the flat iron in 1912 because she “wanted to try something different and became obsessed with the idea of straightening hair.” Shero, just pressed two clothing irons together and called it a day. At the same time, the second, a woman named Erica Feldman, is simply credited with using the curling iron to straighten her hair, which isn’t inventing anything at all.
![flat iron money flat iron money](https://www.hairstraightenerjudge.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/FIORE-Professional-Ceramic-Tourmaline-Ionic-Flat-Iron-review.jpg)
The first, Marcel Grateau, actually invented the curling iron for his Parisian salon around 1872. But they always appear in articles about the history of flat irons. There are four people credited with inventing the hair straightener and none of them actually did. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here. The archives will remain available here for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox.
![flat iron money flat iron money](https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/cartoon-character-style-monitor-money-eye-vector-illustration-cartoon-character-style-monitor-money-eye-171529835.jpg)
Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years.