Expertise and social skills: hairstyles, wigs and wigmakers during the revolution

Résumé 0

Since the late 1980s and until recently, several historians have dedicated themselves to clothing and fashion in the French capital at the time of the Revolution. While some of them inferred events and political ideas from specific effects on appearances, the question of hairstyles and wigs has been relatively little discussed. It deserves to be re-examined, in the light of a historiographical positioning anchored not only in the history of fashion, but also in that of caring for the body. The approach chosen here is to cross-reference with the analysis of institutional and iconographic sources, and the examination of the actions of practice of professionals – wigmakers, hairstylists, hair and fashion merchants. This makes it possible to paint a qualified picture of the effects of the Revolution on the gestures and representations of hairstyles, to draw the outlines of a market undergoing complete restructuring and to examine the issue of the politicization of wigs.