How My Hair Look: The Best Durag Moments on "The Wire"

The first durag we see on the series comes not from a member of the Barksdale crew but from a random dealer named Ghost, caught and cuffed by Kima, Herc and Carver when his girl, fed up, snitches on his pickup procedure.

The first appearance of Balitmore's de facto hero on the series is just as iconic as you remember it: bathed in darkness like a ghetto Robin Hood, shotgun cocked and head cape wound tight like he means business. Which he did: RIP to loyal Barksdale teen's kneecap.

Wee-Bey, ever the loyal soldier, slid into the everyday jail alphet of prison-blues and wave cap effortlessly.

With Avon in jail and the Barksdale crew faltering, Bodie moves into already-claimed territory and this rival dealer doesn't like the disrespect nor the durag one upmanship. By the next episode, they're trading bullets.

Wow, this stylistic stunt is such a next-level way to open the show's second-best season. Throughout the first two years Bodie had already proved himself up to par as far as durag flaunting goes, but with Avon still in lockup he goes for the crown here with the flawless camo look. King shit.

Of the many new conflicts set up in the season three premiere, none were as visceral and immediate as this brief but extremely tense durag face-off between Bubble's partner-in-fiend Johnny and a Stanfield thug. Obviously if we're judging, Johnny wins both for being a white guy rocking a durag (always an instant-W) and a print-patterned one at that, but this dude's glower foreshadowed how ruthless Marlo and his crew would reveal themselves to be.

Another king moment from the undisputed lord of durag swag in Body-more, Murdaland. That untied, nah-no-fucks-here, draped-and-billowing look makes for a powerful image. This is competing with T.I. levels of flawlessly angled fitted hat geometrics, because even though Bodie's a man about town for the day searching for Marlo, you can bet the rag never slipped.

Here's some guy who's down with Cheese Wagstaff and takes care of the dogs, if you can be that generous about dudes who put their pits in the ring against each other. But his rag to shirt coordination is A1, so there's that.

Cheese Wagstaff is many things: uncle betrayer, deadbeat dad, and all-around shitty mid-level drug enforcer, but damn if he didn't love his dogs. Not to be confused with dawgs, as the MCU wrongly assumed in this episode.

"All Due Respect" is randomly a big episode for durag looks, so of course King Barksdale has to get in on the action, holding on strong to the jailed-up capped-up steez.

Tha god Slim Charles goes full Fabolous while posted up waiting to spring a trap on Omar with the full on T-shirt/bandana/durag tri-combo. Flawless victory.

Avon's highly anticipated release from jail comes with a greeting from Stringer and some fresh new Rocawear with which to purge himself of the lowly jail alphet, which is promptly tossed out of the Escalade while in motion. Everything except the wave cap, of course.

Look at Avon, headed back to the pen the same way he left, except not at all. Stringer's dead by his indirect hand and he's holed up in a wartime bunker (seriously, dudes have grenades on deck) hiding from the Stanfield crew. But if there's one full-circle element in place: at least his waves will be as tight as they were when he got out.

Shed a thug tear, better yet two, for the homie Bodie's last hour. At least he died as he lived, with his waves tightly wound.

One of the cleanest kills on the series comes in the final minutes, at the hands of Slim Charles when he finally puts a bullet through the wave cap of that piece-of-shit Cheese. No shots at Meth.

The last durag worn in this GOAT series, the honor of which goes to recurring corner boy Spider.