Wigging Out With Frankly Fake Tresses

Sture Osten sat stroking a curly red wig in his lap. “A wig isn’t like real hair,” he said affectionately. “It’s a permanent thing.”

The Swedish-born hair stylist admits he prefers wigs over real hair, mannequins over people. “With mannequins, I don’t have to worry about how heavy a wig is,” he said, “or how uncomfortable.”

But after 20 years in the business, Osten sees “an overnight boom” for his long, artificial “hair additions,” as he likes to call them, in the animate as well as mannequin worlds. He traces demand for frankly fake tresses to the designer fashion shows last spring in New York, Paris and Milan, where models wore 50-inch clip-on ponytails and other dramatic hairpieces.

Since then, Osten has launched a line of wigs and hair extensions with names like the Bardot (a ponytail) and the Tina (a wild mop), which he brought to Bonwit Teller in Beverly Hills last week.

Pastel-colored wigs are hopelessly “last year,” he said. Metallic hair, even more passe. The latest wave in high-fashion wigs is for realistic--if exaggerated--hair, said Osten, who rummaged through a suitcase for a frazzled blond wig with black roots.

“The next big thing will be the dark-roots look,” said the 42-year-old, whipping the knotty mass over his own dishwater hair and noting he sometimes wears wigs to surprise people.

But on the Bonwit Teller main floor, less eccentric synthetics proved more enticing. Women ranging from their 20s to 50s tried thatching their own locks with Osten’s thick braids, ponytails and crimped, pre-Raphaelite pieces. Fifty pieces sold during Osten’s three-hour visit, according to store management.

“Don’t ever put a brush to that, but you can shake it as hard as you want,” warned Osten’s marketing specialist Brooks Parsons, as a woman bought a wavy blond arrangement, which she somehow planned to attach to her own short hair.

“If I hate it, I’ll wear it for Halloween,” she said, and left.

“Wrap it,” instructed Carol Campbell of Westwood, also buying a huge rumpled style. “Understatement is not one of my characteristics,” she explained.

Osten said such lack of inhibition is a far cry from his early wig days, when people tried on hair in private--not in the open, like jewelry.

He began cutting his mother’s hair when he was 8 and became the Swedish national hair-styling champ at 17. He entered the wig business in the mid-1960s. A decade later, during a lull, he turned to coifing mannequins--for which he continues to craft his most elaborate dos.

Osten said until recent changes in fiber processing, artificial hair was heavy and required expert styling. Newer hairpieces are fluffier and lighter weight, he said, adding that an Osten hairpiece, which retails for $10-$45, typically includes two fiber thicknesses and strands of a dozen different colors.

The new rush for put-on manes means Osten expects a 25% rise in business over his 1985 volume of $4 million. He said that figure will more than double next year, with increased production out of the Sture Osten factory in Korea. Osten also has offices in New York, Hong Kong and Munich.

“I really wasn’t prepared for this,” he said of a growing market that appears to encompass most ages. “I’m surprised myself at how the mature ladies, in their 50s, are wearing them. They start with a little piece, then come back to buy a bigger one.”

“I want another braid arrangement. What can you do?” asked a 45-year-old woman who already had bought one chignon. When Osten offered various hair selections, she protested that one made her look “pious,” another “too old.”

“Are you going to go out on the town in this?” Osten asked.

“I’m going to walk my dog,” she replied.

“It turns me on to work with pretty girls and nice ladies,” Osten said shyly.

“But I wouldn’t want to do this every day.”