"In the last six months customers want a wig like Kate Middleton's hair," says Esti Bergman, the owner of a business that creates and sells high-end wigs to the ultra-Orthodox sector. “Last year there was a Farrah Fawcett trend, long and flowing. Middleton’s style is relatively modest in terms of length and also jauntier.” 

The wigs Bergman creates are expensive: their price tag starts at 7,000 shekels ($1,800) and can reach 20,000 ($5,200), depending on color and length.

What's surprising here is not only the concern with appearance on the part of women of the ultra-Orthodox sector, which upholds modesty — and obligates them, among other things, to cover their own hair after marriage — but also their objects of admiration: a young British duchess and a famous late American actress. Neither belongs to the cultural world of the ultra-Orthodox, a community that is typically closed and conservative, even antiquated. 

These wigs, in addition to fashion design for ultra-Orthodox women and "daring" lingerie shops for the sector, are somewhat confusing to secular Jews who see ultra-Orthodox style from the sidelines. It seems that concern with appearances should run contrary to the values of this conservative society, in whose most extreme branches the women cover their whole bodies from head to toe.