The Salon Mistake That Changed Tina Turner's Look Forever

Tina Turner's contributions to soulful rock 'n' roll will forever go down in history, and her iconic image is just as legendary. Glitzy dresses and high-energy performances were part of her schtick, but her big hair makes her instantly recognizable across generations. And like the best things, her signature tall hairstyle — achieved with wigs — wasn't planned, but came about as the result of a salon mistake.

"It took an accident, one that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, to prompt me to get my first wig," the "Proud Mary" singer wrote in her 2018 autobiography "Tina Turner: My Love Story" (via the Daily Mail). "I was at a hair salon with the [band's backing singers] the Ikettes and the beautician let the bleach stay on my head a little too long." While it's possible to recover your hair from bleach damage, Turner needed an instant fix because she was due to perform. What could have been a disaster turned into what Turner called "a life-saver," as she loved the way the wig "looked, how the hair moved when I moved, how it was straight and pretty and held a style" when she was on stage, per her autobiography.

A 10-foot statue of rock n' roll queen Tina Turner was unveiled in the rural Tennessee community where she grew up https://t.co/q8PMF94W7l pic.twitter.com/ItmAtzrTO6

— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) September 29, 2025

In September 2025, a statue of the icon was unveiled in her hometown of Brownsville, Tennessee, and unfortunately, fans felt that artist Fred Ajanogha failed to do Turner's hair justice. "I'm sorry, but the [T]ina Turner statue is hilarious," one disapproving fan wrote on X. "I can't look at it without laughing. And that's my girl, but Why they do that to her hair?" Though the likeness did capture Turner's larger-than-life hair, it didn't achieve the tailored quality that the "Nutbush City Limits" singer went for in life. 

Tina Turner may have spent the early years of her career applying smoothing treatments to her natural hair to try and cultivate the look she wanted, but once she discovered wigs, she never went back. The reason she was able to stick with faux hair for the rest of her career is because she made a point of having them custom-made so they looked like her real hair and fit her signature style. As she specified in her autobiography (via the Daily Mail), she didn't want to be "wearing a curtain of fake hair," which is what many fans think the 2025 statue is portraying.

"I like looking the same, as if it's my own hair," she told the Daily Mail's YOU Magazine in 2018. "Not like Cher." In her autobiography, the eight-time Grammy winner added, "I'm not surprised when people think my wig is my own hair, because I've always considered it an extension of myself. In a way, it is my hair." Even as Turner's look changed over the years and she debuted the backcombed blond hair of the "What's Love Got to Do With It" era in 1984, she stuck to wigs. "Issey Miyake sweater, leather jeans — rock 'n' roll stuff — and my hair was big, big, big," she said of her look at the time while speaking to YOU. In 1996, she told "60 Minutes" that the real human hair in her wigs came from Africa and Italy, and that tailored approach is why they never looked like they came "off the rack." 

Now, Turner may have been the queen of the wig game, but these celeb wig moments turned heads for the wrong reasons.