“The origin of hair is basically large for me when creating any wig,” says Pickens. “As a result of all of us innately as human beings decide up on hair strains and the way pure hair appears to be like. The second it does not bounce from the highest or there’s not the best texture across the hairline, the viewers begins to go, ‘One thing’s somewhat off.'” Pickens says he and McIntosh researched “I do not even know what number of” appears to be like, from Monroe’s origins as Norma Jeane to her platinum blonde, “JFK years.” “[Norma Jeane] had mousy brown, curly hair,” Pickens says. “Simply because she’s bleaching her hair, and [it was] being pin curled by among the finest hairdressers in cinema — doesn’t suggest her hair nonetheless is not curly.”

The wigs, which had been custom-made — assume couture on your head — had been hand tied by Pickens and his staff, who spent over 150 hours making a last product that mimicked Monroe’s precise hair sample. “After I say ‘detailed all the way down to the knot,’ Marilyn’s corners grew horizontal, so we tied these hairs horizontally,” says Pickens. “We appear like loopy folks typically with photographs pinned everywhere in the wall all whereas we’re tying. And we even tied a cowlick [into the wig] as a result of how else is Jamie Leigh purported to get the signature ‘poof’ if we do not tie in Marilyn’s cowlick on the right facet?” Pickens notes there are six instructions through which the hair may be tied and, as soon as it is tied, it is like a hinge, shifting in two instructions to create a pure carry and motion to the hair itself.

To realize the movie’s titular hair coloration, every wig had three shades of blonde in them, together with a shadow root to trick the attention into pondering it’s actual hair coming from the scalp. The wigs additionally featured child hairs across the hairline.

“Marilyn has a signature widow’s peak and…curly hair naturally has extra progress lengths and normally extra child hairs across the hairline,” says Pickens. The staff additionally used a course of referred to as steam perming — wrapping the hairs on dowels, then utilizing water and warmth to create the curls — to create {custom} curl patterns that may give McIntosh extra management over how the hair sat on de Armas’s head. Moreover, “[We] did a whole lot of Angora mohair element across the hairline. We use it as a result of it emulates the vellus hairs on the hairline,” Pickens explains. “There’s a whole lot of element that goes into that final half inch to actually promote it.”

Lots of the appears to be like all through the movie are references from precise photographs of the star. Kerwin and McIntosh estimate there have been over 100 complete appears to be like recreated for the movie; of these, solely 50-60 made the ultimate lower. That is another excuse wigs had been probably the most environment friendly choice: They wanted to have the ability to rapidly change de Armas from look to look on set. However getting them to look reasonable additionally meant making tweaks to de Armas’s scalp.