The Favourite Hair and Makeup
While filming The Favourite, makeup artist and hair lead Nadia Stacey was given a lot of creative freedom due to the comedic nature of the movie. "I learned everything about the makeup that they would have used and the hairstyles [at that time] so I started to pick those to pieces and add my own slant," she said.
The best example of this is in regard to the white wigs people wore during the 18th century: Stacey wanted to create the same general silhouette of the original ones, but with her own twist. "I changed the colour, the shape, and the material. We put bows on the bottom of some of them. One of them was a big, thick, orange wig with curly side pieces, but then the back has just got a ponytail with a ribbon. Things like that wouldn't have been correct."
Adding her personal touch to the wigs was no easy feat — Stacey was in charge of the over-100 wigs used on the set, some of which she had to create herself. "There wasn't enough of those wigs in circulation in the UK for me to get a hold of, and so there were lots of nights [where the team] sat watching TV stitching these wigs and making all the versions of them because we just didn't have the money to buy them."
Despite the many wigs they had on set, there still weren't enough for the entire film. While shooting, the team had to take the wigs they'd already used and repurpose them for other character later in the film. Each wig took three to four days to create, which made this a very time-consuming process.