Abbott Elementary Season 6: Hair Design Strategy and Continuity

Showrunner, creator and lead actress Quinta Brunson meets daily with hair department head Moira Frazier to map the season’s hairstyles. At the start of each season Frazier assembles a mood board for every principal character; Brunson then approves or rejects the concepts. The finalized designs guide the hair team through a non-linear shooting schedule, ensuring that each character’s look stays consistent across takes and episodes.

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Brunson emphasizes that viewers should instantly recognize a character’s silhouette, noting that hair is a key visual cue for maintaining a sense of time without radical changes.

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The collaboration pairs Brunson—executive producer, writer and star—with Frazier, the hair department head responsible for translating concepts into wigs, styling, and continuity tracking.

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Frazier’s mood boards guide specific character treatments. Janine’s occasional ponytail signals an “out-of-school” look while preserving her usual curls. Barbara’s “wet picture-day” scene uses a gel-treated wave pattern to mimic rain-soaked hair and retain consistency across takes. Ava’s Halloween episode required two wigs—one short enough to fit a large Darth Mau mask and another longer version that covered the mask while keeping the character’s silhouette. Melissa’s ’80s homage combines teasing and crimping to enlarge her curls without invoking a “Grease” aesthetic. A Ryan Coogler homage required a deliberately imperfect store-bought wig and a modest mustache. The team also balances color choices, such as Ava’s calmer palette, to reflect character growth.

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Consistent hair styling reinforces each character’s identity, helping viewers follow rapid scene changes and supporting the show’s visual brand.

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Brunson says the partnership is essential for “showing passage of time” while keeping characters familiar, and she views modest hair tweaks as narrative signals. Frazier notes that non-sequential filming demands gel applications and multiple wig versions to preserve continuity across disparate scenes.

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• “It’s important to show passage of time. We have this thing that I find to be important to TV shows, where I want the characters to continue to look the same. I don’t want them to come in with a totally different look.” — Quinta Brunson, Showrunner

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• “People should be able to draw the silhouette of the characters, and they know who the characters are, and that includes hair. So, Moira will bring modifications.” — Quinta Brunson

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• “I took a wig — and remember that Barbara’s character, in my mind, has hair relaxers. I didn’t want her hair to get wet and then turn into an Afro. So, we opted for a wave pattern. To achieve that, I just wet it down and added a gel mixture with water to give it that ‘I just got out of the rain’ look.” — Moira Frazier

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Season 6 of *Abbott Elementary* premieres later this year, and Brunson and Frazier say the hair-design workflow will evolve as new storylines demand fresh yet familiar visual cues.

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