Chris Glimsdale created the signature hairstyles in “The 19th Wife” movie. Find out how she and her style team clipped, braided, tucked and sprayed the hair into shape!

How did you research and design the hair styles for “The 19th Wife”?


The research was done on websites, looking at polygamous groups in Texas. The style is big pompadours in the front and the braids tucked under, and very neat and tidy. We looked through the Internet, books, period pieces, and especially for the Brigham Young scenes, we looked at photographs from historical sites.

How exactly did you sculpt the Snooki-style hair poof on the actresses?


On the actors and the extras, it was a lot of back-combing, a lot of hairspray, and then barrettes and clips. There were different types of braiding. The women didn’t do their own hair unless they were the only wife; they actually did each other’s hair, so they made more technical braids. We did inverted-fishtail braids, which is two-strand braids, and regular braids, and we added a lot of hair pieces [on the actors], because women these days don’t really have hair long enough to do that. Finding all the right people was a big part of it too, with no bangs and the right look and hair length, and with no [artificial] hair color.

So how many bottles of hairspray were used in the making of the movie?


We used about 1.5 liters of spray, which we call “English Channel” because it’s such a strong spray that it doesn’t move. The women didn’t believe in having pieces of hair around their face — it was classified as sexual — so we had to keep them really neat and tidy even in the wind.

How much time was needed every day to style the hair of all the actors?


It took about three hours every morning with a team of five of us, and it’s just nonstop. There was a day when we started at three in the morning and it took about four hours; you just get into the zone and you just go. We had an excellent team and worked really well, and it was nonstop, with no bathroom breaks, no coffee breaks, just trying to get it all done. Over time it became a little easier.

When the producers were casting, were you also there to evaluate the hair of the extras?


Yeah, I probably spent about two weekends going to casting calls saying, “That’s the right hair, that’s not right, that texture will work, we can make this work if you like her look.” We were there for the whole process for men, women and children. Some people were upset that they weren’t picked, but they didn’t have the right hair.

How does this movie compare to your other professional experiences? Was it more difficult? Have you ever had to style hair like this before?


I haven’t done anything like what you see in the first part of the movie. In the period scenes, we’ve done a lot of the 1865 sort of look, so that becomes second hat and you just make that happen, and it’s easier to do that kind of hairstyle. It was challenging in the sense of trying to get everyone done all at once and on time. We couldn’t have those wispy pieces; it had to be fairly maintained the whole day. It was a lot of work, but we really enjoyed it, and the people we were with were great and the cast was amazing. It’s probably one of the first projects I’ve worked on where there was so much focus on hair. Normally it’s about everything combined, but everyone kept saying “It’s all about the hair.” It was fun to be part of that experience.