During World War I, the four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II — Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia — contracted measles in early 1917, which caused them to lose their hair. They shaved their heads as a practical response to the hair loss caused by the illness.
This happened during an already tumultuous time: the family was under enormous strain as the war dragged on and revolutionary pressure mounted in Russia. The girls were photographed bald, and these images became some of the more striking personal records of the Romanov family in their final years.
It was a fairly common practice at the time to shave the head when recovering from illnesses like measles or typhus, as it made caring for the patient easier and avoided the patchy, uneven hair loss that the fever caused. The photographs, taken by their French tutor Pierre Gilliard, show the princesses looking quite cheerful despite everything. In his diary, Gilliard noted that the sisters typically wore scarves to hide their heads, but on this day, they playfully whipped them off at a signal from Olga to surprise him and their parents.
By the time the family was executed in July 1918, their hair had grown back to roughly shoulder length.
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