05-21-2020, 09:53 AM
Nicholas Piazza has 600 pounds of hair in his garage on Staten Island.
He kept the hair weave in the plastic box and cardboard box opposite the fishing gear. "There are gray ones, brown ones, and gold ones. All colors, "he said.
In a box, shiny brown hair bunches snuggle up like snakes. He picked up two thick braids and lifted them out of the box. The braids were about 0.9 meters long and almost fell to the ground. "It's all hair cut from people's heads in Russia," Piazza said.
Piazza is 69 years old. His ancestors were Sicilian immigrants, detectives, and tournament fishermen. He doesn't look like a man who collects foreign hair bundles in the garage. For decades, though, Piazza has been one of the most popular wig makers in New York City. He has made customized headwear and hair films for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Brooke Astor, and Lena Horne at the Kenneth salon. He also made the world's closest thing to a mermaid's hair: the long shawl that Daryl Hannah showed in "the modern Mermaid”.
Most of his human hair weave came from this store, and he collected it from all over the world. At the end of the day, his studio couldn't fit the hair. "I can't close the closet. I have so much hair that I don't even know what to do with it, "he said.
Piazza is one of the last wig makers to make wigs for the public in New York City. These wigs are made by men and women, mostly from the eastern hemisphere. They are basically raised by Italian and Jewish immigrants in the ancient industry of handmade wig weaving. This is a detail oriented business, which requires patience between tailoring tops and counting stars.
It's not the bright pink short hair in the Halloween shop. They are made of human hair and have complex and fine hairlines that blend with the skin. To make this kind of wig, you need to use a small needle to weave the hair onto the lace net cap, and you can only weave a few strands of hair at a time. This process is called "arranging". The root of a set of lace wig may contain up to 150000 nodes, and the "hair arrangement" process may take 40 hours.
A wig at Nicholas Piazza's studio in Manhattan. Copyright: Demetrius Freeman / New York Times
Piazza ran a studio on 57th Street in Manhattan for 25 years. This street used to be a high-end wig center with wig makers such as Bob Kelly and Raffaele Mullica. Kelly made a wig for Saturday night live for 30 years and died in 2011; Moroka had moved the studio to the upper east side. When Piazza's old building was transformed into a luxury high-rise building, he moved to Midtown. Recently, he rented several rooms in a modest salon in midtown, where he worked only three days a week, mainly for the maintenance of clients' wigs, which started at $3850.
"My work is over and now it's just a smooth transition," Piazza said.
This seems to be another out of date craft that disappeared from New York as the craftsmen left one by one. But lace front wigs are far from being abandoned by the times. In fact, the demand for wigs has never been as strong since the boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s when piazza and other wig makers entered the industry. Wigs are just one part of the booming human hair trade that started with hair collection.
According to Emma Taro, an anthropologist and author of Entanglement: the secret lives of hair, hair extensions rekindled the "global hair trade boom" of the early 1990s. According to the Census Bureau, the value of human hair imported from the United States last year was $685.3 million, compared with $51.6 million in 1992.
Hair includes human hair, synthetic hair, and animal hair, and sometimes a secret mixture of the three. Today, human hair weave has become a billion dollar industry. As Chris Rock found in the 2009 documentary good hair weaving, the driving force of the industry is the African American market, which has accepted the headsets, hair extensions and braids.
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He kept the hair weave in the plastic box and cardboard box opposite the fishing gear. "There are gray ones, brown ones, and gold ones. All colors, "he said.
In a box, shiny brown hair bunches snuggle up like snakes. He picked up two thick braids and lifted them out of the box. The braids were about 0.9 meters long and almost fell to the ground. "It's all hair cut from people's heads in Russia," Piazza said.
Piazza is 69 years old. His ancestors were Sicilian immigrants, detectives, and tournament fishermen. He doesn't look like a man who collects foreign hair bundles in the garage. For decades, though, Piazza has been one of the most popular wig makers in New York City. He has made customized headwear and hair films for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Brooke Astor, and Lena Horne at the Kenneth salon. He also made the world's closest thing to a mermaid's hair: the long shawl that Daryl Hannah showed in "the modern Mermaid”.
Most of his human hair weave came from this store, and he collected it from all over the world. At the end of the day, his studio couldn't fit the hair. "I can't close the closet. I have so much hair that I don't even know what to do with it, "he said.
Piazza is one of the last wig makers to make wigs for the public in New York City. These wigs are made by men and women, mostly from the eastern hemisphere. They are basically raised by Italian and Jewish immigrants in the ancient industry of handmade wig weaving. This is a detail oriented business, which requires patience between tailoring tops and counting stars.
It's not the bright pink short hair in the Halloween shop. They are made of human hair and have complex and fine hairlines that blend with the skin. To make this kind of wig, you need to use a small needle to weave the hair onto the lace net cap, and you can only weave a few strands of hair at a time. This process is called "arranging". The root of a set of lace wig may contain up to 150000 nodes, and the "hair arrangement" process may take 40 hours.
A wig at Nicholas Piazza's studio in Manhattan. Copyright: Demetrius Freeman / New York Times
Piazza ran a studio on 57th Street in Manhattan for 25 years. This street used to be a high-end wig center with wig makers such as Bob Kelly and Raffaele Mullica. Kelly made a wig for Saturday night live for 30 years and died in 2011; Moroka had moved the studio to the upper east side. When Piazza's old building was transformed into a luxury high-rise building, he moved to Midtown. Recently, he rented several rooms in a modest salon in midtown, where he worked only three days a week, mainly for the maintenance of clients' wigs, which started at $3850.
"My work is over and now it's just a smooth transition," Piazza said.
This seems to be another out of date craft that disappeared from New York as the craftsmen left one by one. But lace front wigs are far from being abandoned by the times. In fact, the demand for wigs has never been as strong since the boom in the late 1960s and early 1970s when piazza and other wig makers entered the industry. Wigs are just one part of the booming human hair trade that started with hair collection.
According to Emma Taro, an anthropologist and author of Entanglement: the secret lives of hair, hair extensions rekindled the "global hair trade boom" of the early 1990s. According to the Census Bureau, the value of human hair imported from the United States last year was $685.3 million, compared with $51.6 million in 1992.
Hair includes human hair, synthetic hair, and animal hair, and sometimes a secret mixture of the three. Today, human hair weave has become a billion dollar industry. As Chris Rock found in the 2009 documentary good hair weaving, the driving force of the industry is the African American market, which has accepted the headsets, hair extensions and braids.
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