25 September 2025 |
Diana Ross in the Motown TV special G.I.T. on Broadway, 1969. Courtesy of NBC
The hair-story behind one of the wildest and most expressive transformers in the beauty tool kit.
“No one who was there will ever be the same.” This was the tagline for Woodstock, the landmark 1969 gathering in Bethel, New York, billed as three days of peace and music. Years later it would inspire another kind of landmark festival. As the story goes, in 1984, a group of drag queens dizzily filing out of New York City’s Pyramid Club hatched the idea for their own Woodstock, but instead of Jimi and Janis, the stars taking the stage would be drag performers like Leigh Bowery and Lypsinka. Picture it: peace, music, and drag. And the following year, in the East Village’s Tompkins Square Park, the Pyramid headliner Lady Bunny officially birthed Wigstock. For 16 years (with one revival in 2018), Wigstock was a riotous, joyful celebration (something that felt especially vital during the peak of the AIDS crisis) of drag culture and performance where, of course, wigs featured prominently. From sky-high updos built with a rainbow of feathers to acid green and hot pink space buns, the bigger and bolder, the better.
But even the first incarnations of wigs abided by that same credo. Some of the earliest wigs date back to ancient Egypt, when both men and women wore them because, while shaving your hair off was more hygienic, bald heads weren’t considered attractive, says Rachael Gibson, aka The Hair Historian. “The type of wig worn would have revealed a great deal about your rank and status, with the wealthiest in society wearing the highest-quality and elaborate versions,” she continues. Like, say, the wig cover made of gold, gesso, carnelian, turquoise glass, and jasper from circa 1425 BC that was found in the tomb of three minor wives of Thutmose III. Years later, in 17th-century France, King Louis XIII’s wigs—once again designed to depict wealth and status through their fullness (and also to hide his hair loss)—got curlier and more voluptuous throughout his reign, Gibson says. The 16th-century English monarch Elizabeth I was never seen without her trademark red wigs (she reportedly had at least 80 of them), which were also to camouflage hair loss, and throughout the 1700s elaborate powdered wigs continued to be big and bigger for England and France’s elite.
After a long period of wigs falling out of style, they took root again (albeit briefly) at the turn of the 20th century, when Gibson Girls (the visual ideal of the era’s independent and educated “new woman”) were grabbing faux hair pieces to add extra oomph to those precariously piled updos, and then again in the 1920s when flappers started pairing their shimmering beaded gowns with evening “wigs” that were essentially, Gibson says, close-fitting hats made of metallic thread that mimicked gold and silver finger waves.
In the years that followed, wigs went from something to flaunt to something to be ashamed of, as faking it (hair-wise, at least) was frequently the butt of the cultural joke. “Wigs were associated primarily with covering something up, like hair loss, illness, or aging,” say the hairstyling duo Hiro + Mari. “But over time that perception evolved.” At last, in the ’60s, wigs came back in a big way. While often overlooked, South Korea (and the women there who donated their hair) played a big role in the revival: The country manufactured most of the wigs popular at the time in the U.S. But it was high-profile Black women of the ’60s, like Diana Ross, Gladys Knight and Ronnie Spector, and their outsized ’dos, and then the growing drag community, that wigs really owe a huge debt to. “The popularity and innovation of wig styling within the Black and queer communities have gone a long way in normalizing their usage and making them more accessible for everyone,” Gibson says.
PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY OF ANTONIO VERDIN
And the quality, especially since the invention of HD lace (synthetic or human hair is tied to a sheer section of lace at the front of many wigs to mimic the natural hairline), has evolved dramatically in recent years. “Today’s wigs feature more breathable lace, natural movement, and realistic density,” says Vernon François, a hairstylist and global ambassador for Olaplex. “The craftsmanship is approaching couture level.” Because of that, stylists like François, Hiro + Mari, and Evanie Frausto (who has created his own line of wigs called, simply, Wig!) rely on them more than ever, particularly in editorial, red carpet, and performance con- texts. “I can’t remember when wigs or hair extensions haven’t been a part of my creative process,” François adds.
On the runway, wigs are used to push against the boundaries of convention every season: Sam McKnight has wielded them for some of the most well-known presentations of Fendi and Chanel (such as the choppy pastel bobs seen at the latter’s cruise 2013 show); Marc Jacobs frequently relies on them to serve eye-popping proportions—see his fall/winter 2024 ladies-who-lunch shellacked bouffants; and at Junya Watanabe’s fall 2025 collection, wigs weren’t even on the models’ heads (the designer used inverted versions to construct oversize bomber jackets).
François says that wigs are always a part of his imaginative blueprint, particularly with clients like Lupita Nyong’o, for whom he took the tailoring theme to heart for this year’s Met Gala, focusing on the curvature and details of her intricate ponytail in the same way a couturier would approach a suit. “It was a look that truly captured the expansive possibilities of hair as both structure and storytelling,” he says. In fact, the Met Gala this year arguably showcased the full breadth of wigs’ creative possibilities.
There are, of course, certain stars, who have never not understood that wigs were the way. Take Cher and Dolly Parton, women whose signature styles—long, silky center-parted and buxom blonde curls, respectively have been achieved with wigs for the entirety of their careers. For both, they have been a way to cement their look but also preserve the integrity of their natural hair and, Parton has quipped, ensure that you never have a bad hair day. Lady Gaga and Beyoncé have used wigs as a vehicle for wild experimentation, and the current generation of pop stars lean heavily on hair that isn’t theirs. The same London-based hairstylist (Sarah Necia Wood) who styles Parton’s many incarnations of blonde also creates for the modern crooner Raye, and Frausto has conjured hairpieces for Sabrina Carpenter, Ariana Grande, and Addison Rae.
On-screen wigs are a frequent supporting actor too: consider Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana (in 2021’s Spencer) without that dusty blonde feathered bob, Uma Thurman as Mia Wallace without her sharp jet-black version (1994’s Pulp Fiction), or Rachel McAdams as Regina George without that silky, popular-girl blowout (2004’s Mean Girls). Nicole Kidman has worn them so often on screen (and off) that internet speculation is focused instead on when she isn’t wearing one.
Over the centuries, wigs have shifted from being a tool of concealment into a form of empowerment, François says. “High-profile individuals embracing wigs openly has helped normalize them and give others the permission and confidence to explore this form of self-expression,” he adds. And for some, wigs are that—a means of exploring versions of themselves that aren’t bound by gender, age, hair type, or cultural norms, Hiro + Mari say. While for others they are just a deeply practical option. “That duality of freedom and function is what makes wigs so powerful,” they add.
If transformation is defined as a complete change in the appearance or character of something or someone, there are few things in the beauty world more emblematic of that than a wig, which alters your look, but also, often, something deeper too. Says Gibson: “Hair is so intrinsically linked to our sense of self and how others perceive us that being able to change that up—in an instant, with no long-term commitment—provides us with a glimpse of what it’s like to be someone else, if only for a short while.”
Taken from 10 Magazine USA Issue 05 – TRANSFORMATION, BIRTHDAY, EVOLVE – on newsstands September 18. Order your copy here.
Text FIORELLA VALDESOLO
