History of Wigs Timeline

On March 27, 1663, Samuel Pepys recorded that a periwig supplied by his wigmaker was full of nits, illustrating the hygiene problems associated with wigs.

Image source: Samuel Pepys

A wigmakers' guild was established in France in 1665, and similar professional organizations soon appeared elsewhere in Europe.

Samuel Pepys recorded shaving his head and trying on a new periwig on September 3, 1665. He was uneasy about wearing it because the plague was present in Westminster when he bought it.

Seventeenth-century wigs became extraordinarily elaborate, covering the back and shoulders and flowing down the chest. Their size made them heavy and often uncomfortable.

From the late seventeenth century, European military officers wore full-bottomed, natural-colored wigs that imitated contemporary civilian fashion while adapting it for military dress.

Image source: Military uniform

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, wigmakers were commonly called perruquiers.

Eighteenth-century French wigmakers used an unusual technique of baking hair into dough to help it retain moisture.

Taxes on the baking of hair dough were proposed in 1705, reflecting the regulation and economic importance of wigmaking practices.

As civilian wigs became shorter and powdered, military officers adopted similar styles. Later, false-hair pigtails were greased, powdered, placed in tubular queues, and tied with ribbons.

Wigmaking developed as a craft guild in multiple cities during the eighteenth century, formalizing the specialized labor behind fashionable wigs.

The French Revolution helped end wigs and powdered, greased hairstyles as standard features of modern Western military dress.

In 1801, senior U.S. Army officer James Wilkinson ordered the removal of queues, which had been worn in the army since the Revolutionary War.

Image source: James Wilkinson

Until 1823, bishops of the Church of England and Church of Ireland wore ceremonial wigs.

The wigs worn by barristers preserve the style favored in the late eighteenth century, even after wigs disappeared from everyday fashion.

Image source: Court dress

In some rural areas, people continued wearing wigs well into the nineteenth century, after the style had largely disappeared from fashionable urban dress.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, English and French hairdressers supplied postiches, including small wiglets, curls, and false buns for incorporation into hairstyles.

The use of postiches continued even as women's hair became shorter between 1910 and 1920, but the fashion appears to have declined during the 1920s.

In the twenty-first century, the art and business of wigmaking grew into a billion-dollar industry, reflecting the continued commercial importance of wigs.

In July 2007, judges in New South Wales, Australia, voted to discontinue wearing wigs in the state's Court of Appeal.

Lawyers and judges in Ireland ceased wearing wigs in 2011.