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There was a time when no respectable gentleman was properly dressed until he had placed somebody else's hair on his head.
Not just a little hair, either.
We are talking curls. Lots of curls. Cascading, magnificent, shoulder-covering mountains of hair that made a man look as though an exceptionally glamorous spaniel had fallen asleep on his head.
Today we associate those enormous wigs with kings, aristocrats, judges and portraits of very serious men staring at us as if they have just discovered we don't own any land.
But why did they wear them? Was everybody in seventeenth-century Europe simply having a terrible hair day?
Well... partly.
But since our last investigation somehow involved syphilis, I regret to inform you that syphilis has followed us here too.

Syphilis: Fashion's Uninvited Guest
By the seventeenth century, syphilis had been causing misery in Europe for generations.
Among its many possible manifestations was hair loss. Historical medical descriptions even recognise a characteristic form known today as syphilitic alopecia, which could leave sufferers with conspicuous patches of missing hair.
This was particularly unfortunate because luxuriant hair was increasingly associated with health, strength and virility.
A balding gentleman therefore didn't merely have a cosmetic problem. His head might be advertising something about his health that he would rather not discuss at dinner.
Fortunately, there was an obvious solution: Put someone else's hair on it.
But the disease itself wasn't the only problem. Treatment could be almost as horrifying.

A Night with Venus, a Lifetime with Mercury
Before antibiotics, doctors tried all sorts of treatments for syphilis. One of the most notorious was mercury.
Mercury could be applied to the skin, swallowed or used in fumigation treatments. It was toxic, unpleasant and could produce serious side effects of its own.
An old saying summed up the situation beautifully: “A night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury.”
And mercury treatment could contribute to substantial hair loss as well. The Swiss National Museum specifically identifies widespread syphilis and mercury treatment as factors behind the increasing stigma attached to baldness and the growing popularity of wigs.
So yes: Unlike our unfortunately fictional Syphilis Pinky, this time the disease really does have a seat at the table.
But it still isn't the whole story.
Because for a fashion to conquer Europe, you need something far more powerful than disease.
You need... A Bald King
Enter Louis XIII of France.
Louis began losing his hair while still relatively young and started appearing publicly in a shoulder-length black wig. Suddenly a wig wasn't merely something a man wore because he had lost his hair.
The king wore one.
And if there is one thing aristocrats have historically been extremely good at, it is looking at whatever the king is doing and immediately deciding: Yes. I have always wanted to do that.
Wigs rapidly acquired associations with dignity, elegance and power at the French court.
Then Louis XIII had a son. And his son was Louis XIV.
This was not a man famous for moderation.
As Louis XIV's own hair began thinning, he first supplemented it with hairpieces. By the 1670s he had adopted the enormous full-bottomed wig with the spectacular masses of curls we now associate with the period.
And Louis XIV didn't merely wear fashion.

Louis XIV WAS fashion.

At Versailles, clothing, appearance and etiquette were part of the machinery of status and power.
If the king wore gigantic curls, everybody who mattered suddenly discovered an urgent personal need for gigantic curls.
The wig had completed its transformation. Something capable of concealing baldness had become a symbol of wealth, rank and sophistication.
By the end of the seventeenth century, wigs had become an essential part of fashionable male dress across much of Europe.

And Then Things Got Ridiculous

Naturally, humans weren't satisfied with simply wearing a wig.
Oh no.
We had to make them bigger. More elaborate. More expensive.
Different styles appeared for different professions and occasions. By 1764, one wig encyclopedia reportedly catalogued 115 different styles.
There were long wigs. Short wigs. Bag wigs. Queue wigs. Powdered wigs. Official wigs.
And presumably at least one wig that made its owner wonder how he was ever going to get through a doorway.
A good wig also cost money, which made it wonderfully useful as a status symbol.
Your head could now announce: I am wealthy.
I am important.
I have excellent taste.
And possibly: Please don't ask what is underneath this. But What About the Lice?
Here we encounter another popular explanation.
You will often hear that people shaved their heads and wore wigs because everybody was infested with lice.
There is some truth around the general problem — lice and fleas were certainly familiar companions, and surviving accounts even describe wig accessories intended to trap them.
But the neat internet version — “People wore wigs because shaving your head got rid of lice” — is once again too simple.
Wigs themselves could become infested.
Congratulations.
You have removed the lice from your head and provided them with a luxury furnished apartment.
Even worse, wigs could not simply be thrown into the washing machine.
According to the Swiss National Museum, they were cleaned and restyled by wigmakers, couldn't really be washed in the modern sense and could eventually smell absolutely dreadful. Some even incorporated little traps for lice and fleas.
Which adds a fascinating sensory dimension to all those magnificent paintings.
We look at Versailles and imagine: Silk. Perfume. Candles. Gold. Music. Elegance.
The reality probably contained considerably more scratching.

Wait — Did Women Wear Them Too?

Yes, but here's another misconception.
The great wig craze began primarily as a male fashion.
Women certainly used hairpieces, extensions, padding, powder and increasingly spectacular constructions, especially during the eighteenth century. But they generally incorporated their natural hair into elaborate hairstyles rather than simply wearing the same kind of full wig fashionable among men.
Eventually women's hairstyles became architectural projects of their own.
But that particular insanity deserves its own article.
We have standards. Very low standards. But standards.

So Were Wigs Really Because of Syphilis?

Partly.
And that's what makes the real history more interesting than the simplified version.
Syphilis contributed to hair loss. Mercury treatments could make matters worse. Baldness became increasingly undesirable when abundant hair represented health and virility.
Then Louis XIII made the wig respectable. Louis XIV made it magnificent. The aristocracy made it fashionable.
And wealth and social status kept it going long after a wig had ceased to be merely a convenient way of hiding a balding head.
Eventually the enormous periwigs declined, particularly around the political and cultural upheavals at the end of the eighteenth century.
But some descendants survived. British judges still famously wear ceremonial wigs today.
So the next time you see a portrait of a seventeenth-century aristocrat standing proudly beneath an enormous cascade of perfect curls, remember:
Maybe he was fashionable. Maybe he was balding. Maybe he was copying the king. Maybe he had been ill.
Or maybe he simply looked in the mirror and thought: You know what this outfit needs? Another two kilograms of somebody else's hair.