Wigginess

The rapidly growing demand for wigs, hairpieces and crotch topiary keeps tons of sheared locks moving around the world in an $800 million industry.

By Kelly Wilkinson

July 23, 2002 | For those unfamiliar with the odd subculture that is the wigs and hairpieces industry it can be downright surreal. Imagine warehouses filled with thousands of lopped-off ponytails resting silently in Tupperware bins; people selling hunks of hair on eBay ("ponytails -- just as they were when gliding against the backs of the girls who shed them"); and the pièce de résistance: pubic wigs -- crotch topiary, if you will -- fashioned out of yak hair and dyed to look like flames, bull's-eyes or corporate logos.

Moving hair from one head (or wherever) to another may seem kind of creepy -- like clipping someone else's fingernails and wearing them as your own -- but the buying and selling of hair for wigs and hairpieces is a roaring industry. Each year, tons of hair gets transferred between heads through vast networks of hair brokers, suppliers and manufacturers. And as sure as a pair of shoes made in Milan connotes a status different from that of a pair made in Taiwan, the origin of hair follows the same pecking order. Walk into any wig shop and you'll hear it in the cooing talk about "the finest European-quality hair."

"European hair is definitely considered the best," says Isaac Davidson, a wig designer in New York City who buys human hair to make wigs for private clients as well as for Broadway shows. "It's called European, but what it means is that it's from someone with baby-fine hair," he says. "It could come from Minnesota or anywhere, as long as it's really soft and fine." Davidson says that a high-quality hand-tied wig -- meaning that every strand (about 150,000 of them) has been manually knotted with something that looks like a shrunken crochet hook -- can fetch more than $10,000 if the hair is all "European."

Following decades of receding sales, the industry is now on the upswing. Wigs and hairpieces are not quite as ubiquitous as they were in the glory years of the 1960s -- when it was estimated that one-third of all the women in the United States and Britain owned one -- but according to Michael Kleinman, executive vice president of Celebrity Signatures International, one of the leading wig and hairpiece companies in the U.S., retail sales throughout the industry are expected to top out at $750-$800 million this year, up from $500 million last year. Kleinman's company alone expects to leap to $150 million in retail sales this year from $30 million last year. "It's not like people wear wigs like they wear shoes, but we're at the beginning of the arc," he says.

The majority of wigs are made with synthetic hair, which has become much more realistic than it was in the 1960s, when it resembled the visible hair plugs on a doll's head more than a woman's natural hair. But despite the believability of synthetic hair, human hair wigs still carry the same whiff of opulence -- much like leather vs. pleather. "Synthetic shines too much," says Davidson, who considers fake hair fine for extensions but prefers crafting his wigs out of human hair. "You can spot [fake hair] a mile away."

Real or not, wig wearers swear by the ability of acquired hair to transform one's self-image. "Putting on a wig is a really powerful thing," says Kennedy, a one-name wig maker, stylist and blond-wigged drag queen at Glama-Rama in San Francisco. "It gives some form of incognito and anonymity and mystery to people. It's zero to hero, like that" -- he snaps his fingers-- "in seconds." Says Abby Cohan, a self-proclaimed wig addict, "It brings out your alter ego. Or at least one of them." Cohan is a platinum blonde with red streaks framing her face until she yanks the wig off and reveals the real thing, a much more conservative light brown wavy mass gathered at the nape of her neck. "You get to be whoever it is for that moment that goes along with the wig you're wearing," Cohan says. "When you put a wig on, you become like a whole new person."

Once you understand that tons and tons of hair is being shorn from the heads on which it grew, and is then shipped around the globe, you naturally start to wonder where it all comes from. But since no international organization tracks how much or what kind of hair is shuffled around each year, tracing its origins can be tougher than combing out tangles after a ride in a convertible.

Next page: Posh Spice's Russian hair