Today is National Wig-Out Day: 10 facts about wigs
They’ve been around since ancient Egypt. Ancient Egyptian fashion was for people to shave their heads or have short, cropped Hair. They wore wigs to protect their bald heads from the Sun.
The word wig is short for periwig, which came from the French word ‘perruque’. In the 18th and 19th centuries, wigmakers were called perruquiers.
In the 16th century, wigs were more hygienic than real hair. Head lice were extremely common, and it was easier to de-louse a wig than real hair – you could take a wig off and boil it to get rid of the nits.
Another nasty thing common around that time was syphilis. While today that disease is quickly got rid of with antibiotics, in those days people were forced to suffer the ultimate effects which as well as madness and nasty sores, included hair loss. Being bald became a source of shame so those affected took to wearing wigs. Samuel Pepys wrote when his brother contracted syphilis that if he survived, “he will not be able to show his head—which will be a very great shame to me.”
Pepys wore wigs himself, but was rather ambiguous about it. He wrote about the day he had his head shaved and tried on his new periwig for the first time, mentioning concerns that his headwear might have been made from the hair of someone who’d died of the plague.
Wigs were very fashionable with royalty. Queen Elizabeth I owned 150 individual hair pieces. Louis XIV started to go bald at 17 and hired 48 wig makers to save his image. Charles II of England, his cousin, had a similar problem and wore elaborate long wigs. Their courtiers copied them and hence wigs became everyday wear at court. Needless to say, these fashion accessories became very expensive. Even the most basic wig would cost a week’s salary for an ordinary man in the street. This is where the word “bigwig” comes from, a bigwig being a person who could afford a larger, more elaborate wig.
It takes six heads of hair to make a full human hair wig.
The most expensive wig ever sold at an auction was one that had belonged to Andy Warhol. It sold for $10,800.
Wigs, of course, are often used by actors as part of their costumes. Film studios are among a modern wig maker’s best customers. The second Lord of the Rings film, The Two Towers holds the record for the highest number of wigs used in one film.
Ironically, today, especially at Halloween, people with hair wear "rubber wigs" to make them look bald!
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