The “Utah Curls” trend makes $1.5K extensions seem like little effort

The biggest takeaway from The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives wasn’t the gripping scandals or reality TV dramas — apparently it was her fake hair.

After the successful Hulu premiere last month, her slightly over-expertly poised and coiffed manes became known as “Utah Curls,” named after the origin of the #MomTok troupe.

“We love our hair extensions out here,” LaRae Day, 28, a beauty pageant contestant and business owner from Salt Lake City, told the Wall Street Journal.

She gets 22-inch hair extensions installed at Pleasant Grove salon JZ Styles — co-owned by Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Jessi Ngatikaura — where her #MomTok colleagues also receive hair services.

“There’s nothing better than Rapunzel hair,” Day said.

The viral style has become so popular that it has sparked a wave of hair tourism in Utah.

Kait Moritz, a stylist at JZ Styles, said demand for hair extensions increased after seeing the reality stars’ hair on the show. She claimed her social media inboxes were flooded with requests from fans.

“People all over the country want to fly in now,” Moritz, 25, told the Journal.

She often styles her hair into “Utah curls,” she added, telling the outlet that the “Mormon Wives” extensions cost about $1,500 per appointment for the hair alone — not including the cut and color.

“It’s fun to add extensions and feel like a different version of yourself,” Moritz added.

But it’s spread beyond the Beehive State. In New York City, stylist Liz Christensen said clients regularly cite the “Mormon Wives” stars as hair inspiration, while Lindsey Torres, owner of Texas salon Root & Sage, said her clientele often turn to the Hulu series during appointments refers.

The mermaid-like curls trend has also led to haircut regrets. Siobhain Wiemann, a 41-year-old ultrasound student from Valencia, California, told the Journal she began to doubt her decision to cut her hair.

“I asked myself, ‘Am I being silly for wanting to do hair extensions after I just cut my hair?’ Because look how they all look together,” she said, noting that while she hasn’t gotten hair extensions yet, she has since purchased a curling iron from JZ Styles.

However, the style was criticized by some for looking half-finished.

“I was born and raised in Utah and had no idea this was a purposeful style,” one reviewer wrote in a Utah Curls tutorial on TikTok. “When I saw it, I thought they just didn’t know how to curl their hair.”

“Why do we leave the ends straight? “It leads to damaged ends,” scoffed another.

According to Alyssa Grenfell, 31, a former member of the Latter-day Saint Church, the curls speak to greater values ​​of external beauty in the Mormon community. The San Antonio resident, who has been vocal in her criticism of the church, claimed that in religion, “one of a woman’s greatest assets is her beauty” and that long hair is one of the ways to be perceived as beautiful.

“The goal is to be beautiful, but to be beautiful in the same way,” Grenfell claimed to the Journal.

While the LDS Church has condemned some of the behavior and depictions of religion on the Hulu show, Mormon content creator Ciera Hudson, 29, told the Journal that it had less to do with religion and more to do with life in Utah and the calling to do so I have perfectionists from Utah.

“Everyone here is competing with each other,” she said. “Some people have naturally beautiful hair, and if they don’t, get hair extensions.”