Apopka woman brings characters to life with custom, handmade wigs
Hiedi Musselman had a very specific interest as a child. “I was always the kid that played with everyone’s hair,” says the Alaska native. “I was begging for people to sit in front of me and I would do their braids.”
With her business Mrs. Spookshow’s Designs, Musselman, 44, now gets to play with all the hair she wants. The studio, based out of Musselman’s Apopka home, creates many of the wigs used by local theaters, cruise lines, theme parks and more.
With her hair cropped in a bold punk-inspired swoosh and wearing a spider’s web-print dress, Musselman describes her foray into the world of costuming as beginning very traditionally: going to beauty school.
“I worked in a salon for several years and discovered I really didn’t like it,” she said.
Ten years ago, Musselman moved to Central Florida and began working at the theme parks, “because that’s what you do,” she said. But it was when she got into the local theater scene that her calling really took off.
“I found my people again,” she said. “Just being around very creative people, going into that atmosphere, it fuels you and you feel them and you all become something great.”
Musselman’s previous work made her ideal for a specific job in the theater world.
“As soon as anyone found out I had hair experience it was always immediately, ‘You’re doing the wigs,’” she said. “That was fine by me.”
She first started making wigs freelance, but what with another full-time job, the workload eventually became overwhelming. “I had so much business and so many requests for business that I was having to turn away that I finally took the leap,” she said.
Three years ago, she incorporated. Now, her home studio employs four to eight “spookettes,” women and men who help her not only with the wigs but sewing full costumes.
Many of Musselman’s wigs go to local and national celebrity impersonators. One studio wall is covered in photos and drawings of famous personalities and characters so that she can get their looks just right.
“Anytime someone sends me a photo for reference of what they want, it goes on that wall,” she said.
Inspiration, however, is all around her.
“I have a ridiculous amount of pictures on my phone of random
gentlemen and their facial hair,” she said. “I have whole folders of pictures of people and their hairlines. I get a strange look sometimes when I stop people and go, ‘This is going to be very random, but may I take a picture of your beard?’ Most everybody is chill with it, though.”
While Musselman loves all hairstyles, she does have favorites. “I love the ’40s,” she said. “The era of the big waves and the peekabooover-one-eye look, it’s just so cute.”
Musselman works with both real hair and synthetic.
“They’ve done great things with synthetics these days,” she said. But whatever the material, the art will always come from the time taken with the piece. “There are hours and hours of labor involved. Especially making a wig from scratch.”
Musselman says a good wig is what “finishes” a character properly. And she encourages other people to dive in.
“Y’all, there’s enough work out there for everybody,” she said. “We need good people that have a passion for it.”
You can find Musselman on Facebook under Mrs. Spookshow’s Designs.