Wigs

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the benefit of wigs fell into abeyance in the West for a thousand years until revived in the 16th century as a means of compensating for hair loss or improving one's personal appearance. They also served a practical purpose: the unhygienic conditions of the time meant that hair attracted head lice, a problem that could be much reduced Wigs if natural hair were shaved and replaced with a added easily de-loused artificial hairpiece. Fur hoods were also given to in a congruent preventative fashion.

Perukes or periwigs for men were enticing into the English-speaking universe with other French styles when Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, following a lengthy exile in France. These wigs were shoulder-length or longer, imitating the far-off hair that had become fashionable among men since the 1620s. Their appropriateness forthwith became popular in the English court. The London diarist Samuel Pepys recorded the sunrise-to-sunset in 1665 that a barber had shaved his head and that he tried on his new periwig for the first time, but in a college year of plague he was uneasy about wearing it: