Ryan Murphy’s fever dream adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’ The Shards is packed with requisite ’80s signifiers: absent parents, early-MTV bangers, Satanic Panic-fueled serial killers, and, of course, a homecoming queen makeover.
“She’s a fall not a spring—she’ll need warmer undertones. But I do like what you’ve done with the hair,” says former Indiana beauty queen Liz (Evan Rachel Wood), offering backhanded approval to her lookalike daughter Debbie (Hayes Warner) and her styling skills ahead of a pivotal—and shocking—homecoming court coronation in episode six. Liz’s straight bangs and blonde lob feel severely glam—and nod to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Elvira Hancock in the 1983 crime epic Scarface, a Murphy request.
“That hair is also very iconic from the ’80s,” says hair department head Valerie Jackson. “It was really fun to give Evan Rachel Wood something that she hasn’t really had before, style-wise. She was very into it as well. Every time we put that wig on, she instantly would be like, ‘There she is, ready to go.’”
In the episode titled “Homecoming Part One,” aspiring actress Debbie and her high-achieving best friend Susan (Kaia Gerber)—the presumed homecoming queen—have conspired to divert the prestigious title to Rhonda (Ivy Wolk), a well-liked classmate and recently escaped kidnap victim (seriously, this show has everything). The first step in their master plan is transforming the free-spirited Rhonda with a quintessential ’80s teen-movie homecoming queen look. “Your beauty is maybe more… severe… maybe even feral,” says Debbie, to a tentative Rhonda. “Like in a European way.”
For the series in general, Jackson explains that Murphy wanted to avoid stereotypical ’80s looks, like shellacked claw bangs and aggressive perms, which also skew later in the decade. They did make an exception for Debbie, in a flashback, and Rhonda, who both sport still-polarizing crimped hair in earlier scenes. “But when [Rhonda] has her makeover and is going to be homecoming queen, that’s when you get to see more of a softer curl and a feathered bang.”
To the dulcet tones of Lionel Richie’s “Lady” and armed with Miss Breck and Rave hairsprays and an array of curling irons from Debbie’s ornate pink vanity, the best friends reassuringly soften Rhonda’s straight-as-a-board bangs and long dark hair into a tumble of bouncy curls, twisted up on one side and tucked behind the other ear. “Since Debbie and Susan are doing the makeover, her new style is a little more reminiscent of something that they would have worn,” says Jackson.