Men wore wigs in the 1700s for a mix of reasons that shifted over time: to follow a fashion set by kings, to signal their social rank and profession, and to deal with the practical realities of hygiene in an era before modern sanitation. What started as a royal trend in the late 1600s became so deeply embedded in 18th-century life that your wig style essentially told the world who you were, what you did for a living, and how much money you had.
Two Kings Started the Trend
The wig craze traces back to two monarchs in the mid-to-late 1600s. King Louis XIV of France began losing his hair in his twenties, much like his father, and started wearing wigs to hide it. By his 30s, he committed fully, commissioning a long, full-bottomed wig of tight curls from his personal barber, Benoît Binet. Louis was the most powerful and influential ruler in Europe, and his taste in wigs spread rapidly to royal courts across the continent, becoming a standard feature of noble dress.
Across the English Channel, King Charles II brought the fashion to England when he reclaimed his throne in 1660 after a long exile in France. Charles reportedly favored wigs not to hide baldness but to conceal his gray hair. With both the French and English courts embracing wigs, the style filtered down through the aristocracy and eventually into the broader population. By the early 1700s, no respectable gentleman would appear in public without one.
Wigs Told People Who You Were
In the 1700s, the type of wig a man wore communicated his gender, rank, occupation, and even his political leanings at a glance. This wasn’t subtle. Different professions and social classes wore distinctly different styles, and choosing the wrong one would have been as jarring as wearing a judge’s robes to a farm.
The full-bottomed wig, with its cascading curls reaching past the shoulders, was the most formal and expensive option. It was the wig of royalty, high-ranking judges, and wealthy aristocrats. Over the course of the century, several alternatives emerged for men of different means and stations:
- Tye wig: hair drawn back into a tail (called a queue), popular among gentlemen and military officers.
- Bag wig: the queue tucked into a small silk or satin bag at the back, a refined choice for formal occasions.
- Bob wig: a short wig with no tail, favored by men who couldn’t afford the expense of a long wig, including tradesmen and the middle class.
- Scratch wig: a rough, minimal arrangement designed to look like real hair, worn by farmers and outdoor laborers.
Lawyers could be identified by their old, uncurled tye wigs with baize bags. Servants of noble households wore wigs as part of their uniform. Even cooks and kitchen workers were expected to wear wigs in some households. A proper dress bob suitable for landed gentry cost around 2 pounds and 3 shillings, while a child’s wig might run only 6 to 8 shillings. The most expensive wigs used human hair, while cheaper versions were made from goat, yak, or horsehair.
Hygiene Was a Real Factor
Beyond fashion and status, wigs served a genuinely practical purpose. Head lice were a persistent problem in the 1700s, and wigs offered a clever workaround. Many men shaved their heads completely, which made wigs more comfortable to wear and eliminated the natural hair where lice would otherwise thrive. If a wig became infested, it could be sent out to a wigmaker for cleaning or boiling, which was far easier than treating lice on your own scalp.
Wigs also helped men manage the reality that bathing was infrequent by modern standards. Rather than washing long natural hair (which most people rarely did), a wig could be maintained, re-curled, and powdered by professionals. The powder itself was typically made from wheat, potato, or rice starch, sometimes mixed with ground chalk or even fish bones to achieve a bright white color. These powders were then scented with whatever the wearer preferred: ground flowers, cinnamon, cloves, mace, or essential oils like orris root, which smelled of violets. There was no single “correct” scent. The powder absorbed grease, freshened the wig’s appearance, and masked unpleasant odors all at once.
The Legal Profession Held On Longest
Wigs entered British courtrooms in the 1680s for a simple reason: that’s what everyone was already wearing outside them. During Charles II’s reign, wigs became essential for polite society, and the legal world eventually followed. Judges were actually slow to adopt the trend. Portraits from the early 1680s show judges defiantly wearing their own natural hair, and the judiciary didn’t adopt wigs wholesale until around 1685.
Once the legal profession committed, though, it never really let go. Judges wore only full-bottomed wigs until the 1780s, when a smaller, less formal “bob wig” with frizzed sides and a short tail was introduced for civil trials. As wigs fell out of fashion for the general public toward the end of the 1700s, the legal profession was one of the last holdouts, alongside clergy and the servants of noble households. British barristers and judges still wear wigs in certain courtroom settings today, making the legal wig tradition over 300 years old.
Why the Trend Died Out
By the late 1700s, wig-wearing was already declining among the general public. Simpler, more natural hairstyles were becoming fashionable, influenced partly by Enlightenment ideals and partly by the political upheaval of the French Revolution, which made aristocratic excess deeply unfashionable. In Britain, the government delivered the final blow in 1795 with the Duty on Hair Powder Act. Anyone who wanted to keep using hair powder had to visit a stamp office, register their name, and pay for an annual certificate costing one guinea, the equivalent of roughly £100 in today’s money. For most people, that was a steep price to pay for a fading fashion. The tax accelerated a shift that was already underway, and within a few years, powdered wigs had largely disappeared from everyday life.
The reign of King George III (1760 to 1820) marked the transition. By the end of the century, wigs were mainly worn by bishops, coachmen, and lawyers. Even bishops were given permission to stop wearing them by the 1830s. What had once been the defining feature of male appearance across all social classes became a relic, preserved only in the specialized dress codes of the courtroom.