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In the old days, people did not bathe regularly. This is not a joke, by the way. Indoor Plumbing was rare, and some people even believed bathing was harmful. In Shakespeare's day, people covered themselves with perfume to hide the fact that they did not bathe often. Upper-class men wore wigs partly to represent status and authority, but they also wore them for a practical reason-- they hid lice. And they were powdered to hide dirty hair.
Interestingly, the custom of wearing a wig-hat persisted even into the era when people DID begin to bathe regularly, and today, in British courts, male attorneys and judges still wear the wig-hat. Americans began to wear it in the early republic, but they rejected it, as they rejected other customs that reminded them of being a British colony.
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Why did men wear powdered wigs?
They used the powder to get a white or off white color. Later they had developed ways of getting white wigs. The was a tax on wig powder that ended the style. Men shaved their heads and were powdered wigs because of lice, fleas, bedbugs etc...
What were Revolutionary War wigs made from?
The wigs were commonly made of human, horse, goat, or yak hair.
Who convinced the US Supreme Court justices not to wear the traditional powered wigs?
Thomas Jefferson advised the new Supreme Court members, "For heaven's sake, discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges took like rats peeping through bunches of oakum."William Cushing apparently ignored Jefferson's advice, and was the only justice to arrive for the Court's first session bedecked in the powdered wig he'd worn as a Massachusetts judge. By the time he completed his walk to the Merchant's Exchange building that February morning, he had endured so much ridicule from neighborhood boys that he immediately discarded the wig.Although a few early Presidents and members of Congress wore formal white wigs, the Supreme Court of the United States never adopted them.
Why are wigs so expensive?
Some wigs are made from human hair. The collecting, sorting and grading of collected hair is labor intensive and time consuming.
How many wigs did George Washington own?
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