18th Century Wig... a simple hack

I've been a very bad blogger as of late. I've been doing mostly commission work, and EGLolita. The project that I'm going to share with you is for me, but is also in the style EGL. The community that I sometimes attend events with is having an Over the Top Tea. I've decided to do a rococo themed coord. To start that out I've decided to style an 18th century Tall Ship wig.

I started out with a copy of 18th Century Hair. I highly recommend that book. Lots of good information there.

I'm not going to go into step by step detail on how to make this wig, because you'll need to buy the book for that, however I am going to share how I "hacked" these instructions.

First off I started with an inexpensive full lace wig. I decided on a lace front because I've dyed my hair hot pink and mint green... this would NOT blend into a wig well. so I chose a lace front to look as natural as possible. I've done non-lace before, and the hair line is particularly non-natural. So, on a lark I decided to try a lace, just to try it out. I like it. I only mention this because the book doesn't offer a lace wig as an option. So that right there is a little hack. from the same company, and in the same color # I bought an elastic fall.

The main part of this little hack has to do with the materials list given in the book... I didn't want to buy all that stuff... like lots of different weaving hair in different textures. I just thought the whole thing was a bit extreme... so here is what I did...

First, I put the lace front wig on a form and mapped out a pattern to make the wire form. If you have the book you'll notice that my form is considerably smaller than what is in the book, this is because I'm doing Lolita... I want over the top, but humorously, a real rococo ship wig is really, really, big, much bigger than I need.

The book would have you at this point cover the wire form with ratted weaving hair. I didn't want to buy more hair, so I instead first covered the form with black felt.

After I covered the form with felt, I sprayed it down with spray adhesive. Then I stuck polyfill to the back and sides of the form.

Once I had the shape I was looking for, I spray painted the poly fill flat black.

At this point I sewed the form to the wig, pulled apart the elastic fall, and used that hair to cover
the back of the form, build the sausage curls and the loose curls at the base of the neck.

 

 

 

This is what the elastic fall looked like as I was taking it apart.

 

 

 



And here is the finished wig:

 

 



 

A Polonaise from 1780

I just finished a 1780's polonaise. It's very loosely based off of this one, from the V&A:

I like how the skirt is pulled up over the outside of the skirt. Also how there is trim along the skirts hem. I like the pinked ruffle on this petticoat from the Met.

I found some lovely silk and linen blend in L.A's garment district the last time I was there. It's embriodered in a tambor-ish style. I also found some not very slubby dupioni silk to make the petticoat. I had 20 yards of embriodered lace trim to use along the skirts hem and to trim the bodice. So it was easy enough to make this little polonaise. I used J.P. Ryan's anglaise pattern.

Here is the finished dress:

The bodice closes with pins.

To make this pinked and flounce petticoat I made myself a jig, used pinking shears to do the cutting and brushed the raw edges with Fray Block.