Sophie's Nook

I have a love-hate relationship with colourising Romanov photos for one reason….

The fucking hair colour.

Literally every single person who knew them had a different word/colour for their hair that it makes it so hard to pick a colour.

Pierre Gilliard says they were ‘very fair’ (Olga) and ‘auburn’ (Tatiana), Anna Vyrubova says ‘blonde types’ [Olga, Maria and Anastasia] and ‘rich brown’ [Tatiana], Sophie Buxhoeveden says ‘fair’ [Olga and Anastasia], ‘dark’ [Tatiana], ‘her hair had golden lights in it’ [Maria] and Lili Dehn says ‘quantities of light chestnut hair’ [Olga], ‘dark chestnut hair’ [Tatiana] and ‘masses of dark brown hair’ [Maria].

Tbh I’m more inclined to believe Lili’s descriptions more but I’m probably biased. The only thing that everyone seems to agree on is that from lightest to darkest it was: Olga, Anastasia, Maria and Tatiana.

The only way that all these differing descriptions make sense to me is if they are all at different points in time (Gilliard’s description is in 1907 and Anna’s is in 1912 but idk when Lili or Sophie’s is). I don’t find it hard to believe that all the girls had blonde/blondish hair when they were younger and that it darkened as they got older (my dad’s hair used to be practically platinum blonde when he was 5 and by the time he was 16 it was dark brown so it’s certainly not impossible).

There’s also these portraits (first two are Fabergé portraits, the little pair one is from Fabergé as well I think but I’m not 100% sure) but as @romanovsonelastdance said “I think in some cases the artists were working from photographs, which can make hair look darker than it really is.” which for me makes it even harder

I think we only have two drawings of them that were actually done by themselves (but even then I don’t think it’s 100% confirmed that it’s of them). The first one is this one done by Anastasia in 1910 (which shows possibly Maria on the left and Anastasia on the right) and the girl on the left looks as if she has brownish hair while the girl with bangs has blonde.

And this watercolour done by Olga in 1911 which shows her having dark brown hair (but this could be a photo defect possibly? I’m sure I’ve seen a lower quality version of this watercolour and the hair looked a bit more chestnutty brown)

So with all this here’s my opinion (this is all speculation with not much evidence to back it up so pls don’t quote me on this).

Olga: Blonde (or maybe strawberry blonde) as a baby/child and then maybe it got darker at 9/10 years old (so maybe dirty/dark blonde at this point?), by the time she was 15 it may have reached light brown (or chestnut) and it carried on getting darker until maybe 1914?

Tatiana: Blonde as a baby and then maybe got darker at 4/5 and by 10 it was light brown/chestnut. By the time she was a teenager (15?) it was dark brown/chestnut. I can imagine that her 1913 wig was maybe darker than her actual hair but I’m going purely off of looks. 

Maria: Nearly the same as Olga but I feel like her hair would have gotten darker at a younger age (maybe 7?). I feel like she would have gotten to the light brown stage as an early teen (but maybe she still had some blonde/golden glints) and then a darker brown in maybe 1915?

here’s three more winx wallpapers/screensavers from way back when! sorry if the quality isn’t great… these were swiped from i think the 2007 winx site

i have two more s1 screensavers to post and then idk, maybe i’ll begin to unload the rest of my screensaver collection if there’s interest, or if i feel like it (which means i’ll probably be posting them lol)