Wig Maker Is Last Authorized by the Bar

Con Varnabas doesn’t let his work go to his head. But it adorns many of the best-coiffed attorneys in the country.

Varnabas, 47, is Australia’s last wig maker to the Bar, sort of the equivalent of the royal dressmaker.

He works out of his one-room tailor’s shop in Sydney, where he also makes other apparel for barristers. It is a centuries-old craft that he learned 31 years ago from a tailor in London.

The painstaking process requires turning long strands of imported horse or yak hair into the wigs that put the pomp and ceremony into the legal profession.

“You must have the right contacts to get the hair,” Varnabas said. “When I need some, I ring my brother in London, who gets them from the man who taught me to make wigs. Where he gets them, we don’t know, but we think he gets the yaks hair for the judges’ wigs from Switzerland.”

Wigs are required of members of the Bar in court according to the theory that the law should be anonymous and that everyone, from the youngest attorney to the most-senior partner, should look the same.

But of course, there is some variation from one attorney to another. Some sport their wigs at a jaunty angle. And an older wig can actually be a mark of distinction--since horse hair turns green with age, the greener the wig, the more experienced the lawyer.

As a result, most attorneys hang on to the same wig throughout their careers, many even handing them down through the generations. Varnabas recently renovated one that was more than 100 years old.

Attorney Clive Evatt found it impossible to carry on his family’s wig tradition when he followed his father, Clive Evatt Sr., to the Bar.

“My father got his passed down from someone else in 1924,” he said. “So by the time I arrived at the Bar in 1956, it was so battered that he was the only one who had the courage to wear it, so I had to get a new one.”

An attorney’s wig starts at about $750 (U.S.) for 35 hours of work. A judge’s wig can cost $1,420 (U.S.).