18th Century Wig-stravaganza Pt.1

Hooray, my wigs have finally come and are in my clutches! After ripping open the box and hastily pulling my two wigs out of their packages, I stuffed the first one on my head and laughed out loud of the ridiculousness of it, followed by promptly snapping some pictures of my shame.This is the “Farm Girl” wig (available everywhere, but I got mine from VogueWigs.com), a highly synthetic Halloween costume-quality wig with a surprisingly 18thc. shape. However, it needed some help.

Step 1 was to brush the wig out and fluff it up. It needed a lot of coaxing and will probably need more fluffing in the future. I back-combed (not teased at the “roots,” but just combed the hair upwards), and finger-teased and filled in holes, of which there were many. I untied the pigtails, cute as they were, and was left with four large, slightly separate hanks around the back. All of them gathered into a ponytail at the back was too much, so I took the hank on the left and the hank on the right and braided them together in the middle. I curled this braid into a bun, tucked it up under the floofy part of the hair, and pinned it. I imagine this to be a fairly historically accurate method of reducing hair bulk. Two hands of hair remained in the back that could easily be pulled together into a ponytail and tied with a leftover strip of silk taffetta. Only big bows will work for big hair :-).

The end result, after practically no work at all, was this:I want to turn the ponytail into more of a sausage curl rather than a fluffle-poof (technical term). I think I can do this with the boiling water method, but I have to be careful. I don’t want to melt off my tail. It really doesn’t look bad as-is. Now, this wig isn’t all that big, when you compare it to others, and it’s not all that wide either, whereas some 18th c. wigs seem to go out to the side. If you’re thinking of using this wig, regard it as a basic go-to headpiece, but know that it is quite limited. It is indeed a *costume* wig, and rather shiny synthetic hair. Take it for what it is! I am extremely happy with it!

So I mentioned a second wig, and here she is!…This is a surprisingly high-quality synthetic wig, also from VogueWigs.com. I’m so happy with how this wig looks as-is that I hardly want to change it! I haven’t fiddled with this one yet, and I need to do a curling-iron test on it to see if it can take heat. The packaging insert says no, so it might be the boiling-dip method for this one too. However, I love this wig so much that I am considering not trying to curl it into oblivion, but instead keeping it as an all-purpose costume wig, able to be formed into many styles for various decades and centuries. It’s so much hair I’m not sure what to do with it all, but it can certainly be braided, twisted, pinned, pouffed, or just left fabulously natural. Sorry to disappoint!
The quest for the ultra-large “Duchess” wig is still on, though! I may need to change tack….