Five Things I Learnt from Wearing a Wig

Brian Kernohan is thinning a bit on top – but it was his secret, until his hairdresser pointed it out. For My Secret Wig he donned a hairpiece, stepped outside and learnt a lot about himself and our relationship to wigs.

1. You Can’t Tell the Difference

If a wig is well-made you can’t tell that someone is wearing it. Wigs for the theatre used to have a visible line across the forehead that had to be covered up with wig paste and heavy theatrical greasepaint. Nowadays a wig can be made with human hair – or even the customer’s own hair – to match any style or colour, with a cap made of the finest lace which blends seamlessly when laid against the skin. And really, you can’t tell.

2. Every Hair is Knotted by Hand

OK, so there are wigs that are manufactured on machines too. But making wigs by hand takes literally days of painstaking work. I watched the process in the workshop at Raoul’s in London, the only wigmakers left in the UK which still manufactures and repairs wigs on site. It involves sorting real human hairs so that they all line up in the same direction, blending a selection of different colours of hair on a vicious-looking miniature bed of nails called a hackle, then using a technique called whipping to knot the hairs, one by one, into a lace cap.

3. Wigs Can Be Secret… or Very Public

Everyone’s familiar with those elaborate, curly wigs men used to wear in the 17th century. Well their popularity was all down to Louis XIV of France, who started losing his hair while he was still a teenager. His answer was a very public wig, to keep his baldness (and his syphilis) secret. That secret-public split is just as relevant today. Raoul’s supplies its wigs discreetly, to customers who don't want their names mentioned, but its wigmakers also work closely with the theatres of the West End. Actors love wigs, because they can save hours of preparation each night before a performance.

4. People Don't Really Care

One of the things I did for the documentary was walking through airport security wearing a wig. I did it because I wanted to know what people go through who wear wigs every day just to feel normal. I had expected people to look and point, but I discovered that, although one or two people did glance my direction, most people really didn't notice. Which taught me that nobody really cares what you look like – nowhere near as much as you care yourself. Which was great – and also strangely liberating.

5. Embrace Your Inner Bald

“Embrace your inner bald” is something that a sixteen-year-old girl called Sophie, who's going through cancer treatment, said to me. She had just taken off her wig for me, in a room full of strangers, and it was a moment that I think will always stay with me, because it was so brave of her, but also so poignant. What Sophie was saying was that some of us might have hair, and some of us might not, but we’re all bald underneath. No matter how we might cover that up, we all have our own insecurities, our own sense of vulnerability, so accept it, embrace it.