For nearly two hundred years, powdered wigs were not just a fashion statement, but a must-have for every self-respecting person. The fashionable wig would not have become so popular if it weren’t for venereal diseases, a pair of balding kings, and poor scalp hygiene. The wig’s story begins, like many other stories, with syphilis. By 1580, venereal diseases were so common in Europe that they had become a veritable epidemic, and syphilis was the most common disease since the Black Death. The famous surgeon William Clowes even described it as “an endless flood of syphilis patients clogging the hospitals of London, with more and more being added to them every day.”
Without antibiotics or any other modern medicine we know today, victims were forced to deal with the full range of side effects of this disease: open sores, severe rashes, blindness, dementia, and irregular hair loss that led to a baldness that swept the continent. At the time, hair loss caused public embarrassment, not only because long hair was fashionable but also because it had great class significance and a bald patch could tarnish the reputation of any person, especially those of high-ranking people.
Thus, the outbreak of syphilis was the starting shot for the fashion for wigs, with the help of which the victims of syphilis hid their baldness and with the help of the powder (which contained poisonous lead) they could hide the bleeding wounds that scarred their faces. The wigs were made of horsehair, goat wool or human hair and to keep away unpleasant odors they were perfumed with the scent of lavender or orange.
Louis XIII and Louis XIV make the wig fashionable
Despite their growing popularity, the first wigs lacked any form or style, their function was to hide flaws and they were not worn by everyone. But all this was about to change in 1624 when King France Louis XIII began to lose his hair and began to wear wigs regularly. The courtiers and nobility were quick to flaunt wigs, and the upper middle class soon followed suit. Worried that his baldness would damage his reputation, Louis XIV, who had begun to lose his hair when he was just 13, hired 14 wig makers to save his image.
About five years later, the King of England, Charles II, also began to adorn his head with a wig when his hair began to turn gray (the explanation is that both kings had syphilis), but the color of the wigs also began to turn gray only when Louis XIV began to age. The cost of wigs increased significantly and foreign wigs became a symbol of status and wealth. A wig for everyday use cost the same as the average person's weekly wage, but the price of large and luxurious foreign wigs could reach the equivalent of 2 weeks of work. The nickname 'big wig' was intended to describe snobbish people who could afford expensive foreign wigs.
When Louis and Charles died, wigs did not disappear and the reason for this is that they were a very useful item not only to hide these bald spots and various defects but also to deal with the plague of lice that was spreading at that time, the attempt to get rid of them and their annoying itching caused people to shave their head hair and thus transfer the lice to infest the wig instead of the hair of the head. Disinfecting the wig was much easier than removing lice from a person's head, they would simply send the dirty and lice-infested wig to the wig manufacturer and by boiling the problem would be solved.
At the beginning of the 18th century, in addition to the grayish hue they acquired, the wigs began to be shortened, and after the death of Louis XIV They became a fashion item in their own right when men's wigs were pulled back and curled on either side of the head. Wigs became so fashionable (in 1765, some 115 different wig styles were recorded) that almost everyone wore them – from servants to kings.
Women who enjoyed more abundant hair were less likely to use wigs, and to decorate their hair, they usually used hair extensions, ribbons, jewelry, and during the heyday of women's wigs, in the 70s, they even added various accessories such as birds, ships, and anything else that came to mind. This fashion was responsible for Queen Marie Antoinette's eccentric wig designer, Leonard Attier, who enlarged and created huge, high wigs that were equipped with a spring-loaded handle to cause the wig to collapse if you entered a low doorway or when sitting in a carriage.
The foreign wig leaves France
At the end of the 18th century, fashion began to fade due to French RevolutionThe wigs that were a symbol of royalty, nobility, and the bourgeoisie began to disappear from the heads of people who feared losing them to the guillotine, and in 1795, when British Prime Minister William Pitt imposed a tax on powder (which was a mandatory item to complete the look of the wig), he basically put an end to this fashion. Despite this, servants, older people who had been accustomed to wearing wigs their whole lives, or just people who were not up to date with the latest fashion trends, continued to wear wigs until the beginning of the 19th century, but not for long. Louis XVIII, who was part of the old regime, was already king in 18 with a short haircut made of his natural hair adorning his head, and since then, various haircuts and hairstyles have taken the place of the wig that disappeared without a trace.