How accurate is this gif of 20th century women's hair/makeup in China?

by ruanlingyu

Here's the gif in question: http://i.imgur.com/9TgyoEY.gifv

keyilan

Pretty accurate.

Remember that we have tons of photos and illustrations of this period, even going back to before the 1910s. Advertising from that period (basically the first 2/3 of the century) generally was in the form of posters like this . We have examples going back quite a ways to be able to verify (actually base) what you're seeing in the gif.

Where these sorts of attempts at recreating historical hairstyles becomes more problematic is when you go back far enough that all we have to go on is heavily stylised woodblock prints. Then there's some potential for inaccuracies.

For the periods shown in your link we certainly have plenty of records to go on.

You can do a quick image search for "1920s advertising shanghai" and you'll see plenty of examples. I threw in "Shanghai" there because that's where the center of modern fashions was so you'll see the most recent trends for the period you're looking at. Later decades will have had some people wearing "dated" hairstyles as well, but you're not going to see those as much in the ads from a place like Shanghai.