After the fall of the Roman Empire, the use of wigs fell into abeyance in the West for a thousand years until revived in the 16th century as a means of compensating for hair loss or improving one's personal appearance. They also served a practical purpose: the unhygienic conditions of the time meant that hair attracted head lice, a problem that could be much reduced if natural hair were shaved and replaced with a more easily de-loused artificial hairpiece. Fur hoods were also used in
a similar preventative fashion.]18th centuryIn the 18th century, men's wigs were powdered in order to give them
their distinctive white or off-white color. Contrary to popular belief, women in the 18th century did
not wear wigs, but wore a coiffure supplemented by artificial hair, or
hair from other sources. Women mainly powdered their hair grey, or blue-ish grey, and from the 1770s onwards never bright white like men.By
the 1780s, young men were setting a fashion trend by lightly powdering
their natural hair, as women had already done from the 1770s onwards.
After 1790, both wigs and powder were reserved for older, more conservative
men, and were in use by ladies being presented at court. After 1790 English
women hardly powdered their hair anymore. In 1795, the British government
levied a tax on hair powder of one guinea per year. This tax effectively
caused the demise of both the fashion for wigs and powder. Granville
Leveson-Gower, in Paris during the winter of 1796, noted "The word citoyen
seemed but very little in use, and hair powder being very common, the
appearance of the people was less democratic than in England.
19th and 20th centuriesThe wearing of wigs as a symbol of social status was largely
abandoned in the newly created United States and France by the
start of the 19th century. In the United States, only the first
five Presidents since George Washington until James Monroe wore
powdered wigs according to the men's fashion of the eighteenth
century.Women's wigs developed in a somewhat different way. They were
worn from the 18th century onwards, although at first only
surreptitiously. Full wigs in the 19th and early 20th century
were not fashionable. They were often worn by old ladies who
had lost their hair.During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century
hairdressers in England and France did a brisk business supplying postiches,
or pre-made small wiglets, curls, and false buns to be incorporated into the hairstyle.
The use of postiches did not diminish even as women's hair grew shorter in
the decade between 1910 and 1920, but they seem to have gone out of fashion
during the 1920s.
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