The Art of the Wig

“An undescript head of hair is the most difficult thing to accomplish.” 

Raffaele Mollica has been making wigs since the 1970s. The New York Times stepped into his studio, where he weaves "the hair one strand at a time" to create pieces that sell for thousands of dollars. “It’s tremendous labor and all that labor is art.”

In their accompanying piece about wig-making in New York City, The New York Times tells us about other artistes, such as Nicholas Piazza. It is the story of a fascinating but dying world – one that I have wondered about for some time because I have walk past the numerous, cubbyhole shops selling human hair in midtown for years.

Wigs at Nicholas Piazza’s studio in Manhattan. CreditDemetrius Freeman for The New York Times

It's great to see the writer included the deeper, political story of hair by referencing the work of Emma Tarlo and the FTC's brief regulatory guidelines (1970-1995) on labeling hair.

Hair Extensions ~ '50s Style

The 1950s did colored hair extensions too, you know.....What fun!
"It all goes to show, a woman's hair is her crowning glory"

Hair Extensions Back On 50s
Posted by Fashion World Magazine on Tuesday, October 6, 2015

Denise Grünstein: Figure Out

Swedish photographer Denise Grünstein's 2009 series "Figure Out" places solitary, faceless women masked by hair in surreal, Dali-blue-skied environments or dark, simple rooms reminiscent of those found in 17th-century Flemish still lifes. The woman are positioned centrally, yet appear passive. The effect is dreamlike - women at odds with their environments, placed awkwardly, displaced and misplaced. Many images depict hair found on dining tables draped in white linen, suggesting that the hair is edible, can be consumed. But the women are also being consumed by hair their hair. If hair can be understood as something that directly shapes our looks, perhaps these images imply the contradiction of both consuming and being consumed by appearance/appearing.

Denise Grünstein's work is on view in Different Distances: Fashion Photography Goes Art, an exhibition at Aperture Gallery from February 6–February 14, 2014.

  Head over Heels, 2009

 Figure Out, 2009

Female Gaze, 2009

Figurine, 2009

Headhunter, 2009

 Inside looking out, Outside looking in, 2009

 Tied, 2009

Video still from All Flesh is Grass. The title refers to the perishing, temporary nature of everything.

A Fetish Cut

The online fashion website ShowStudio is running an online series called Fashion Fetish as a component to their exhibition Selling Sex. Fashion Fetish includes performances, fashion films, and essays made solely by women working in fashion.  The video "Is My Mind For Me" by Sarah Piantadosi and Ellie Grace Cumming (assistant stylist to Katy England) depicts Sardé Hardie using large shears, to slowly cut off her long black hair.

The film is described as addressing trichophilia, being sexually aroused by hair (or specifically its subset of being aroused by hair cutting). It depicts a girl taking scissors to her long hair in a Junya Watanabe sweater with "Hymn Eola" by Tonstartssbandht providing the soundtrack. The sexual significance of hair as fetish is obvious, but somehow I just don't think there is much eroticism in the 2 1/2 minute video, unless you happen to be a trichophiliac.

There is a strong relationship between women and their hair. Hair is often a symbol and tool of feminine sexuality and power. Cutting off one's long locks has paradoxical meanings: it is an act of renunciation of power, submission almost, as well as an act of fearlessness. And hair cutting is an apt action since fetish is about power/powerlessness and presence/absence.

But fetish is also about arousal, that of either the subject or audience. While the camera's eye is operating voyeuristically, it doesn't seduce the viewer. There is no scopic pleasure. And the actress (who evokes a bit of Kate Moss) shows little emotion. Not fear, joy, or ecstasy. Things improve a bit when, as she takes the shaver to her head, her fingers gently touch the crewed cut, and she caresses her scalp. But when the camera shifts to her toes and the hair gathering on the floor, I think the filmmakers missed the opportunity to have her curl her toes. This one small gesture would have said it all.

____________

The ShowStudio website provides this essay to contextual the works:

If, historically speaking, a fetish is a manufactured object which has magical powers, or one that people are irrationally devoted to, fashion is a veritable fetish-factory of 'It' shoes, 'Now' bags, and garments that magically propose to make your life indefinably better. On a less abstract level, fashion has been obsessed with sexual fetishism for centuries. The subtle constraint of the corset, the snugly-gloved hand, a shiny boot of leather - all staples of the well-dressed man or woman, and equally the well-equipped Sado-Masochist. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Pandora's Box of fashion fetish was blown apart - from Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren's proposal of 'rubberwear for the office' in their seminal London boutique SEX, to Gianni Versace's sanitised 'Bondage Chic' of 1992, to the power of John Galliano's 'Sado-Maso' haute couture collection for Christian Dior in 2000, designers articulated the sexual peccadilloes of a select few across the international catwalks. It's fetish as fashion.

Fashion Fetish hands the power entirely to female fashion professionals, asking them to address the notion of Fashion Fetish and examining their individual visions of women. In contrast with Selling Sex, which reimagines the female relationship with sex, Fashion Fetish focuses on a woman's relationship with clothing. Although as fashion historian Anne Hollander has asserted, the nude in art always wears 'The fashion of her time' - fashion's influence can be felt across the naked flesh, her body as 'fashioned' as a corseted ball-gown. Dressed or undressed, this project offers a clear field, a blank canvas and an open mind to a selection of some of the most important women working in fashion today - designers, stylists, models and image-makers - inviting them to present their own interpretation of Fashion Fetish. Their visual interpretations of the Fashion Fetish theme are then used as the inspiration for a host of female authors, journalists and cultural commentators to 'unpick' fetish in a series of accompanying essays, each written to correspond with a particular piece.

Gaga for Hair

I could say something....but I think this speaks for itself.

I'm the spirit of my hair, it's all the glory that I bear.
I'm as free as my hair
I am my hair

Although, i could do without the interpretive dance moves at the end ;)

The Transfiguration

Still from "The Transfiguration" video/installation by Matt Pyke, 2009

Matt Pyke's video documents the transmogrification of a Yeti-like creature through various stages of anthropomorphic transfiguration “I’m interested in bringing life and empathy into digital art rather than keeping its cold, abstract, machine sensibility,” Pyke says.

Hair through the Ages

Well, this is a cute stop-motion video that's been making the rounds. I'm sorry they left out all the twisted up-dos from the 1870s and 1880s. Also, to leave today's hairstyle long and plain seems a bit of a letdown, given all we have today (dreadlocks, a-symmetrical, dyed, mohawk, mullet). I mean really!! But the video is enjoyable none-the-less and her face works well as a blank canvas for an evolution of Western European hairstyles.