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It wasn’t everybody, just the aristocrats. The fad started with Louis XIV (1638-1715), King of France. During his government, the monarch adopted the wig for the same reason that many people still use the accessory today: to hide baldness. The rest of the nobility liked the idea and the custom caught on. The wig then began to indicate the social differences between classes, becoming a sign of status and prestige.
It was also common to sprinkle talcum powder or wheat flour over the false wigs to imitate the white hair of the elderly. But as elegant as it seemed to the people of the time, the fashion for wigs was also disgusting. “All sorts of animals proliferated, from cockroaches to mice, in those fake hairs”, says stylist João Braga, professor of Fashion History at Senac Colleges, in São Paulo.
In 1789, with the French Revolution, came the guillotine, which excised most wig heads. Symbol of a nobility that wanted to exterminate, they soon fell into disuse. Its origin, however, was much older than the French monarchy. In ancient Egypt, men and women of all social classes already displayed papyrus fiber ornaments – in fact, a disguise for shaved heads because of a lice epidemic. Today, the wigs with white curls, typical of the European nobility, survive only in the English courts, where they make up the judges’ official attire.
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