You most likely know by now that last month I hosted a historical fashion meet up with my friends, the photos of which you can view in my last blog post here. I wore an 18th century rococo look, and in this blog post I'll show you the step by step process of styling my wig.
I knew that for my 18th century outfits I would need a wig, since my hair (pictured below) is very much not going to work with a rococo gown! After looking around for pre-styled ones on the internet I found very few that were nice quality, accurate, or natural looking (hello hard front shiny white plastic wigs). The ones that were good quality and nicely styled were upwards of £200. If you have that kind of money to spend on a wig and want to that's wonderful, but I decided I would have a go at styling my own.
I believe back then all wigs were hard front, and some of the natural hair was left at the hairline to style and hide the hard front of the wig (based off some blogs I read, but don't take my word for it). Of course this wasn't an option for me because of my current hair, so I was on the look out for a lace front. I wanted something of fairly nice quality but still affordable, I wasn't looking to spend more than £50 if I could help it. I had a search on aliexpress and found this milk tea brown/natural blonde wig for around £40 with shipping which was perfect.
I looked at all the blog tutorials I could find to see how they went about styling their wigs, as well as looking at many photos of hairstyles from portraits, period films, and historical costumers. I also discovered
this page which describes 72 different variations of 18th century hairstyles alongside illustrations, which I found incredibly helpful! I think this was my most useful source as the illustrations very clearly show the direction of the hair.
I had a general idea of what I wanted, something fairly tall with hammers at the back that could be worn with a hat on the front, as well as another detail such as ringlets, a catogan (the hair loop at the back of some hairstyles) or a plait or something. I was very inspired by the images from The Duchess below, but in the end I settled on using the 44th hairstyle featured in the Coiffure-ducher page I linked as my main inspiration, as it fit all my criteria perfectly.
Before I get too into things, here's everything I used while styling this wig:
- A nice quality synthetic lacefront wig
- Wig head (one for styling, not just a polystyrene one)
- Rat tail comb
- Wig brush with metal teeth for smoothing
- Wig brush with looped bristles for detangling
- Many many metal hair sectioning clips
- Bobby pins
- Hair pins
- Hair cushion (tights, stuffing, needle & thread)
- Starch spray
- Steamer
- Baby powder
- Powder puff & powder brush
- Pins to keep the wig in place on the wig head
- Small scissors to cut the lace
The first thing I had to do was figure out how I would create the height of the hair. Some sources said to use a wig cage, but I could only find one place that sold them for £100, and I didn't want to make my own as I imagined it would be rather sharp. Other sources mentioned giant hair donuts and hair rats and cushions. I took all this and decided to fashion my own using things I already had. I cut the legs off a pair of beige flesh toned tights and sewed the holes closed. I then filled the pouch with stuffing as evenly as possible before sewing the top opening shut to make a ball.
I then separated the hairline to pin the cushion into the wig, keeping in mind how much hair would be needed for the ringlets, catogan and hammers. I then pinned the cushion onto the top of the head giving thought to how the hat would sit once the wig was styled, basically I wanted a slight slope backwards rather than a pouf that went straight up. I found pinning the cushion securely to the wig quite difficult as I couldn't really see what I was doing, but eventually with enough pins I got the cushion secure.
Next I started to tease the hair at the back base of the cushion, adding some baby powder to help the comb as synthetic hair can be quite slippy. Once I had teased it, I pinned it into a fairly solid loop using a lot of bobby pins. This would ensure there wasn't an empty gap behind the cushion and help sturdy it. It's best if you use pins in a similar colour to your wig.
I then proceeded to bring the hair from the front of the wig over the top of the cushion section by section, layer by layer, pinning each section at the back base down and leaving the curls free, as they would become hammers later on. The first layer I very lightly teased though I'm not sure it did much. It's important to do this by section and later so you can be precise and ensure the cushion is completely covered. As you can see in the third picture, I stuck hair pins into the cushion to keep the hair in place.
Once I had pinned a few layers of the front, I started with the front-sides. I would take a side section, smooth it with the comb or metal toothed wig brush, before pulling it taught towards the opposite side of the wig and pinning, then doing the same on the other side, before doing the same with the front. I repeated this while adding powder for grip, until there was no hair left to pin other than one small layer at either side. I've included a lot of photos for this section to show how any layers I did. As you can see, for each layer I would pin higher up, though still always at the back, thats because the curls would be used to create hammers eventually.
I then pulled and pinned the last layer into hammers at either side of the wig, and pinned some of the excess hair at the back into hammers too, however it looked wrong and I wasn't sold on it. I realised I wouldn't be able to make the hammers exactly like the hairstyle I was copying, and I wasn't sure what to do about this so I left it for a few days to contemplate.
A few days later I returned to figure out how to fix my problem. I first took out the hammers I had done before taking half of the hair that had been the font hammer and pinning it to the top, while pinning the other half to the side like in the image below. I then started to take the loose curls from the back and pinning them into hammers at either side of the back of the head, leaving a small gap between them This was pretty difficult as I wanted to make them as solid as possible and to pin them properly, you have to go through the gaps. Luckily though the hair was already in sections thanks to the way I had pinned it back in the first place, which helped with choosing how much to use for each hammer.
After all 6 hammers had been pinned, I took a small section of hair and pulled it up to pin at the top, joining the two hammers into one long one. I did this again for the 2nd row. Also, sorry about the lighting in these photos, I did this bit at night.
Next I took the remaining hair at the bottom and split it into 3 sections. The middle section needed to be larger then the other two, as it would become the catogan. I made sure it was nice and smooth and combed through it while giving it a light steam to help straighten it. It's very important that for synthetic hair that you don't use heat styling tools like hair straighteners or curling tongs as it will melt the strands (unless the wig says otherwise). I then pinned it up while guiding the loop, and joined the last hammer together.
As you can see, the hammers are a little wonky and gappy. I asked on a historical costuming discord I'm on how to improve them. Apparently the problem was that I didn't use a pomade, however since this is synthetic hair and the pomades are designed for human hair I decided to leave it as I was unsure whether it would work the same or if it could damage the wig.
The wig was very close to being finished now. All I had to do now was to curl the ringlets at either side. I wanted a nice tight but fairly large sausage curl as is generally seen in portraits. I tried using two foam wire curlers together to give a larger curl. I then steamed each hair wrapped curler, enclosing it in a plastic bag to keep the steam in for a few minutes. Once I took them out it became clear that one of the ringlets had worked much better than the other, so I tried again but there was little improvement. Neither were as tight as I'd have liked but after my 2nd attempt I decided that they were good enough.
I sprayed well with starch spray to keep the hairstyle secured, making sure there were no globs of the spray anywhere. Starch spray is our replacement for hairspray, since hairspray is made for human hair it doesn't work the same on synthetic hair, plus starch spray sets much more solidly. I gave it a once over with the starch spray a few times, letting it dry each time before powdering it again, though the powder wasn't super obvious.
Here you can see me trying it on to check everything was okay. To cut the lace I just googled it and followed a tutorial. You can see in the 2nd picture the wig cap is a little visible, however I made sure to tape, glue and pin it down well on the day I actually wore it. It's definitely a good idea to try on your wig before your main occasion so you can make sure it's all good, it's not all wonky or too heavy or doesn't fall apart. After I'd tried it on it became clear I needed to neaten up the front and sides and secure it better with more starch spray and pins.
And that's it, that's how I styled my Rococo wig. I'm really happy how it turned out considering I've only really styled 1 other wig. I think if I make another I'd have fewer visible pins, the photos don't really show just how visible a lot of the pins in the back were, but ultimately everything being in place was more important.
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