Making The Sun King Wig

I'm often taking on too much - to quote musical lyrics, I'm just a girl who can't say no.. but sometimes that takes me somewhere brilliant - like taking part in a free photoshoot. (It also means that sharing via Blog can be a little late)

When offered the chance to take part in the photoshoot in May 2023, I had to come up with three 'looks' which were interconnected and obviously went together. Historical styles were an obvious choice and I knew I wanted to style wigs, not actual hair.

Loosely based around the ideas in Michael Moorcock's series 'Dancers at the End of Time' as influenced by the fashions of the past but using them in more outrageous ways - I decided to style 17th Century, 18th Century and 19th Century wigs but in bright colours and complemented by interesting makeup - and all tied together using the elements fire, water and air.

The first one was the King of Fire. Loosely based on Louis XIV in red and orange.

Synthetic wigs come in beautiful colours, but not the orange and red stripes that I wanted, so the first stage was to unpick the wefts of the orange wig and sew into the red wig. The result was a heavy wig with twice as much hair as normal.

Next, curling time. There was so much hair it was difficult to get onto the curlers, especially the shorter pieces which wanted to stick out.

The wig was backcombed to give extra volume and then came the painstaking task of defining each curl with styling spray. The ends were waxed to make them hold the curl shape crisply - to give a sculptural look and make the wig look more otherworldly.

The wig was worn by the sweetest model on the day of the photoshoot. Not a professional model, she'd never worn makeup before - but really rocked the 'autocratic aristocrat' look. I'd orginally wanted the hair to be blown up away from the face, and I'm just out of shot with a powerful hairdryer, but the waxed curl ends which gave the wig it's satisfying weight and preserved the curl placement, weighed the ends of the hair down, so the result wasn't the free-flowing look I'd envisioned. If I had my time again - I'd do this a different way (holding the hair up and letting it go, maybe) and I'd tuck in that cravat!

Photograph by Matto Lucas. Makeup by Krystle Elizabeth