Modern Living: The Extra

For years, women have built beehives, French twists and bouffant extravaganzas out of their hair, hung flashing objects from it, plunged metal and wire supports into it, and gone out-of-doors stiff-necked for fear it will all come apart. Last week, still dissatisfied with their own, clearly inadequate hair, U.S. women were turning to wigs.

In Manhattan, Macy’s set up a special wig department, which was jammed with more than 1,000 women a day clamoring for synthetic (all-Dynel) wigs, at $49.50. Helena Rubinstein christened a posh new room the Wig-Wig. Max Miller, president of the Joseph Fleischer custom wig company, opened ten new consulting rooms to handle the flood of buyers. Max Factor in Hollywood had to set up folding chairs in the halls to handle capacity crowds. The Elizabeth Arden Salon in Chicago extended its usual three-week wait on wig orders to two months.

Peasants’ Is Best. American women, who for almost 200 years had not worn wigs except for therapeutic, theatrical or religious reasons, were clearly determined to make up for the loss of time. And no one was more astonished than Paris Couturier Givenchy, who started the whole thing in 1958 when he clapped wigs on his mannequins’ heads. He thought it was a gag. Three years later, American women, slow to see the joke, finally saw the potential: brunettes, with only one life to lead, could turn blonde overnight; straight-haired women could have the curls they pinned for; a Cleopatra by day could let down her own long hair at night, without having suffered the irreversible decision of a haircut; two heads, or three, were clearly better than one. More expensive too. A wig of all-human hair (the finest comes from the peasant women of southern Italy) costs an average $250, but there are compensations.

Unlike a human scalp, a wig’s base produces no natural oil. Thus a dry cleaner can do every six weeks what a hairdresser has to do once a week; and best of all, only the hair sits under the dryer. Still, $250 is a fairly stiff price (really fine custom wigs can cost as much as $1,500) and at first wig-wearers consisted mostly of actresses, among them Shirley Booth, Judy Holliday. Kim Novak and Zsa Zsa Gabor (who lost nine of her twelve wigs in last year’s Bel Air fire).

Patent-Leather Style. Machine-made models appeared, but they looked fake and felt creepy. Then, a couple of months ago, a synthetic wig made of Dynel was introduced that looked like hair, felt like hair, kept its curl (or coiffure) for months without resetting, and was relatively cheap. Imitators and competitors came up with part-hair, part-nylon models (like the Myerlon wigs, at $35; the acetate, at $10.95), and even with cheap, phony party or swim-cap versions.

Accessories have now blossomed : wig blocks, costing an average $8.50, provide a stand for the hair, and metal table clamps, averaging $7.50, hold the wig block in place. Luggage departments got into the act, are now offering wig cases.

For only $150, a second head, though it can’t go as cheaply as one, can travel in great patent-leather style.