#wig design

Christine Baranski and Kelli O'Hara on location for The Gilded Age Season 4.

"𝐻𝑜𝑙𝑑 𝑦𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑏𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑡ℎ 𝑤ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑐𝑟𝑜𝑠𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑏𝑟𝑖𝑑𝑔𝑒."

Studio Ghibli-inspired fashion designs.

Wigs designed and created by @cowbuttcrunchies

it’s been a while since I last did any art so I tried my hand at redesigning katniss’s hair throughout the trilogy — basically this stems from my not getting to do anything as head costumer of this year’s college musical 😭

Essentially, this is how I’d design the movie’s wigs to be a little more realistic in showing the passage of time. They’re less “pretty” for sure but I’m a sucker for realistic hair (see: Natasha’s shitty grown-out blonde dye job in Endgame, Daenarys’s battle-worn braid with strands just falling out of it, Elizabeth Swann’s grimy hair and gradual tan).

Natural cut/colour:

Not much to say about this other than that Katniss has dark hair, and it’s probably going to lie limp and flat without the luxury of styling products

It would probably also be shorter, juuust long enough to braid

Styled in the Capitol:

It is my personal belief that all tributes get an ANTM-style “makeover” in the Capitol. What, the Capitol waxes all their hair and erases their scars, but doesn’t give them fresh trims/perms/deep conditioning/new dye jobs??? C’mon they’d totally try and “Barbie-fy” Katniss.

So here I have her with hair extensions, a curly perm and a dye job. Just because it would “bring out her olive skin”, but also she’d look so uncomfortable in the sudden So-Cal glam makeover and that would play out rly interestingly

I didn’t exactly know what to do with her hair for the interview, so this is sort of a rough approximation. It looks very 18th century, but then again that perfectly fits with the decadence and frivolity of the Capitol.

(This can apply for both the 74th and 75th btw.)

The Games

Katniss’s hair would start lightly styled into a braid — I made it a fishtail here instead of her usual 3-strand, just to juxtapose how she’s been “prettied” up for the cameras with what’s actually about to happen to her. She’s been glammed up to get murdered.

And of course we see the payoff of that completely delusional notion — her hair goes limp in the heat/humidity/sweat/grease, strands fall out everywhere, and she’s covered in dirt and grime. The hair extensions are falling out and becoming just dead weight. She’s dying of dehydration and no longer the capitol’s District 12 Barbie. I made the dirt more greenish just because she’d probably come into contact with a lot of moss and rotting tree matter here.

Side note, I HATE it when female characters in fight scenes have ponytails/braids/updos, and they fall/are knocked down, and suddenly their entire mass of hair is just out in the next scene. Like damn u got punched so hard it just vaporised ur ponytail band huh.

District 13

With no more stylists and styling products, Katniss’s Barbie Doll dye-job grows out. It’s ugly and uneven. The extensions come out, and her hair is cut once into her original utilitarian shoulder-length cut. I’d imagine the D13 citizens are allowed one haircut a year, to save resources/time.

The half-n-half hair is ugly. It’s a far cry from the camera-ready Capitol cover girl she was made to be all this time. It’s also a scar/brand on her now — the good food, spacious apartment, favourable treatment, & gorgeous gowns have been stripped away. All she has is her tiny family and the scars from the Games — nightmares, panic attacks, trauma, and a shitty haircut.

Final Battle

By the time Katniss and Johanna finished training to join the D13 military (bc yes, it happened and I wish the films showed how Long she was down in 13), her hair is grown out a little more. Still ugly and disjointed, but there’s a little more of herself than there was.

I didn’t want to draw yet another braid, so the idea is that when she joins the fight she has a small low bun instead. The rebels have been fighting in the Capitol for so long that she probably hasn’t had time to really do a nice braid.

The bun gets strands pulled out left and right. She also has soot and burns from the urban combat environment. Lots of explosions, lots of dusty rubble.

Happy (?) Ending

Time has passed. Katniss has spent her years rebuilding her life. Her natural hair grows back, 100% herself. No capitol styling, no explosive burns.

She never, ever does her “signature braid” again. It was the weight thumping against her neck when the gamemakers tried to burn her alive at age 16. It was the heavy thing plastered to her shoulder, wet with seawater, as jabberjays screamed at her with her sister’s voice. She can’t do it anymore.