I was contacted at the very start of May 2024 by a Senior Conservator of Textile Display at the Victoria and Albert Museum to ask if I would be able to make a single wig for the “NAOMI In Fashion” exhibition which was due to open on the 22nd June 2024. The deadline was very tight as the install of the exhibition was due to start on the 3rd June, so the work would need to be completed and delivered before then.
I few years before I was commissioned to make eleven wigs for the “Kimonos: Kyoto to Catwalk” exhibition at the V&A which ran from the 27th August 2020 to the 25th October 2020. The wigs for this exhibition were intended to be abstract and an impression of the silhouette, rather than incredibly detailed, so as not to distract too much from the costume displayed on the mannequins. When wigs are requested for mannequins, they are often made in house at the museum by the Textiles Conservation and Mounting Department, but due to restrictions on time they were outsourced on this occasion. Amongst the eleven wigs I had to make for that particular project were: the subdued “Gibson Girl”; the elaborate “Courtesan”; an elegant “1930s”; two grand “Samurais”; along with some more modern “Memoirs of a Geisha” characters.
On this occasion the museum wanted a wig made in the same style as an iconic image of “Naomi Seated, Hollywood, 1991“, of which a reference image was sent to me. This photo was shot by the American fashion photographer Herb Ritts at his studio in California. Ritts was born in Los Angeles in 1952. He began his photographic career in the late 1970s and gained a reputation as a master of art and commercial photography. His fine art photography has been the subject of exhibitions worldwide, with works residing in many significant public and private collections.
Ritts was renowned for his use of daylight, and at the top of his studio he had a set up with a folding wall and a floor that could rotate towards the sun. The image of Naomi Campbell was shot at high noon, enabling Herb to play with the light and shadows created by the direct sunlight.
It was requested that the wig should be made from black milliners crin in the same or similar method to the ones I had previously made for the Kimonos exhibition. The museum had ordered a bespoke 3D printed mannequin made in the same pose as in the photograph. The beret that Naomi was wearing was going to be a be a prop so the intention was to stitch this to the wig once it had been made.
I started by making a frame the size of the mannequin head from Rigilene. Rigilene is used to add structure and support to garments and millinery. It is flexible yet incredibly durable, light in weight and doesn’t crack even when folded. It is easy to sew either with machine or by hand, I drilled little holes in it with my Dremel and formed it into a shape held together with thread that would sit on the head. As all the wig was going to be made from black crinoline, I decided to cover the frame using black bias binding to make sure it was disguised. The bias binding was neatly sewn around the Rigilene frame, as seen in the below right image.
The head that was sent to me was sprayed in a copper coloured coating. I needed to mount the head onto something so it was a good working height, and allowed me to drape the black crinoline so that it would hang. I found an appropriate size of cardboard tube that was big enough for the neck of the head to slide into and packed it out with some material so that it was a better fit. I then gripped the cardboard tube into my laying press so that the head was at a good level to work on.
The wig was to be made of nylon crinoline or “crin”, a fabric with a rigid and robust structure and an open weave. In its early days, the term “crinoline” referred to a kind of stiff fabric that was constructed out of horsehair and either cotton or linen. This fabric was used for the production of underskirts and as a garment lining. Modern crinolines are made of cotton, nylon and polyester. I ordered 30 metres of 15cm wide flat crin and 10 metres of 8.5cm wide flat crin and hoped this would be enough for the job.
What follows is a series of reference shots of the making process. As this was a one-off piece I didn’t take detailed notes of all the different steps I went through to build up the wig. Instead I played around with layering the fabric and stitching it into different forms so that when combined the correct hairstyle started to appear.
I only had the above single reference image to work from, no other angles of the hairstyle were available to me which added an element of the unknown into the project! The wig was to be topped with a prop beret once completed, and I asked whether the museum was happy for me to make the wig with a parting on the proper right of the head as to me this is how I imagined her hair to be styled in the reference image.
I cut long lengths of the wider crin and started folding them and stitching them to the frame with a join between pieces creating the side parting. Initially, I pinned the layered pieces to the frame before fixing them permanently with stitches. The pins would be my greatest friend during this project as it gave me a chance to play around with the movable fabric to form the right shapes. I had to dig around for the longest pins I owned to use, measuring about 6cm in length.
Further pieces were doubled over at an angle and sewn into wider sheets to create layers across the back of the head. These layers were then sewn onto the frame in a staggered formation to add some body to the wig in that area. I also folded and gathered some pieces into a point to give a different shaped fixing point which helped to puzzle-piece in with the other layers.
The crin is a very flexible fabric that moves in all sorts of weird and wonderful ways so with careful manipulation is is very easy to turn it from a two dimensional plane into a three dimensional one which was necessary for covering the head of the mannequin effectively.
The agreement with the V&A was that I would send regular images of how I was getting on so that they could respond with any necessary feedback. The first set of images I sent them were the below photos (plus more) of the wig pinned into a vague shape to check they were happy with the general length and profile of the wig before I started to fix the crin more permanently with thread. I took photos at various intervals all the way round the wig to show as many angles as possible.
I remembered I had a cloth mannequin stored away that I thought it would be useful to mount the fibreglass head to to give more of an idea of how the hair would look flowing over the shoulders of Naomi. The mannequin head didn’t fit onto this mannequin so I had to create a card collar for it to slide in to so I could work with it. Given the black crinoline proved challenging to see I also opted to photograph it against a white backdrop to help to try and show it properly. I bought a black beret to better visualise how that would look on what I was making.
The feedback I received about the below two images was that the hair should be pulled in and straighter over the mannequin shoulder on the proper right, and the curl of hair should also be lower on the proper left by the cheek of the mannequin.
I unpinned it and refined the curl by the cheek. I had made various tubes of crin in different sizes to add to the hair at the base, in order to attach the longer lengths of crin around and give it the coiled look at the base of the wig. The crin is very flexible and can coil into different size tubes depending upon how it is stitched. As a material though, once cut the ends are very liable to fray. So the cut ends of every piece needed to be gathered with thread, or concealed within a large tube, or hidden in some way to avoid unsightly prickly ends showing and ruining the sleek look of the wig.
The below left image shows how I worked on pulling the crin in straighter of the proper right of the head.
The below left image shows the layers that had been added to add the volume to the wig, all fixed at slightly different angles to give the density and coverage I wanted for the lower layers.
All the work done to the over shape was crucial to get right so that I could add a final layer to make it look completely sleek when finished. The below images show the “final pin” of the job, to check that the museum was happy with the length, shape and details before finishing it off.
Caught down with tiny stitches, a final layer was fixed in position to give an overall smooth look. Despite looking sleek and refined once finished the underlying layers were in fact complex and complicated!
I was careful to also make the underside of the wig as neat as possible, not knowing exactly what might be seen of it in the gallery space once mounted.
The wig was posted to the museum once finished, along with the fibreglass head for them to fix to the actual mannequin, and for the beret to be added. Given the flexibility of the crin it would still be possible for them to make small adjustments to it during installation to better sit on the bespoke mannequin, which was some thing I didn’t have access to during the job.
I am pleased to also be able to share an image of the wig in the exhibition, which is on now and runs until 6th April 2025.
“Produced in collaboration with Naomi Campbell and foregrounding her voice and perspective, NAOMI in Fashion will be the first exhibition of its kind. The exhibition will draw upon Campbell’s own extensive wardrobe of haute couture and leading ready-to-wear ensembles along with loans from designer archives and objects from V&A collection. In addition to stunning garments and fashion accessories, fashion photography features prominently. Striking images including Ritts’ Naomi Seated, 1991, will form an installation curated by Edward Enninful OBE.”
~ The V&A website
To see more details about the wig, please visit the Special Projects section of my website here.