This week's new wig

Too lazy to write a proper entry, so here's a picture of the wig I got yesterday. I wore it to work today and got a great response. It feels great too, really soft and silky against my face.

More adventures in wigs

I took the plunge about a week ago and wore my newest wig to work. A few of my colleagues knew that I wore wigs sometimes but none of them had ever seen me in one.

I was the first person into the office on the morning in question, and I sit near the door, so everybody saw me as soon as they arrived. Every single person who knows me by name stopped to ooh and aah over my gorgeous new hairstyle. This included all the men as well as the women - and you know how rare it is for men to notice a change of hairstyle! I freely admitted that it was a wig, because I know I'll be going back to my usual hair and also switching to other wig styles when I feel like it, and everyone was really shocked. Nobody had suspected that it was anything other than a really expensive salon job.

Several of the women asked if they could touch it, and were all very impressed by how realistic the hair felt (and this is just a synthetic non-mono, nothing fancy). And my boss asked for a photo of the colour so she could ask her hairstylist to match it! Throughout the whole day I was bombarded with compliments, which has never happened when I've changed my hairstyle before.

Nobody appeared to think that I'm terribly strange for wearing a wig, and quite a few people seemed openly envious of how easy and cheap it was for me to achieve a look that would be very difficult and expensive to get with my bio hair. And now that I've come clean, I can wear whatever style I want! I've already ordered a blonde version of the one pictured here, so you can look forward to seeing me as a blonde bombshell whenever that arrives. Or perhaps I won't show you at all, if it looks awful...

A better blonde. And a puppy.

This is another fixer-upper of a wig. It's a very good quality make, and started life as a really long style. I bought it second-hand and it was definitely showing signs of wear, which couldn't be fixed by a wash and liberal application of silicone spray. The ends were just too ratty. So I gave them the chop and ended up with this shoulder-length style.

I think you'll agree that the colour is a lot better on me than the other blonde wig which I was sporting a week ago! That one has never seen the light of day since, but this one has had a couple of outings already over the weekend.

In other news, my next door neighbour still hasn't fixed her fence (it blew down in December), nor has she paid the slightest bit of heed to the warnings we gave her about the weedkiller that was spread liberally through the garden a couple of days ago. I saw something moving about outside as I was sitting at the dining table, and when I opened the door I found her granddaughter's two dogs playing outside. I was really annoyed with this, as I have already asked her to keep the dogs out of the garden, and it's even worse when she knows there's poison on the ground out there right now. But how cute is this little puppy?

The long and the short of it

Two more for your amusement - a Noriko Robin (long) and a Noriko Sky (short).

They are both well made and fit perfectly, which is as it should be since these are "proper" wigs, not just cheap costume pieces. The Robin is great fun to wear and it has had two outings already, including a wedding evening do. The Sky hasn't been worn outside the house yet, but I'm sure its time will come.

Back to brunette

You can all sigh in relief now - I am looking a bit more normal!

This was a long wig that unfortunately made me look like I was going to a Hallowe'en party or something. Yesterday I had the brainwave of chopping it into a bob, and I love it! I had already messed up the fringe trying to make the long version look good, and I accidentally cut it a wee bit too short around the front, but as a rescue job I am very pleased.

The synthetic hair is absolutely gorgeous, so soft and silky, and I love the feel of it against my face. It is made of a fibre called Kanekalon, and it really does feel like my own hair when I am fresh out of the salon and everything is at its best.

I need some wig clips, because I have a big head and everything slides backwards on it (as evidenced in the blonde photo from yesterday). Time to hit eBay again, I think, but that's surely better than tugging at my forelocks every few minutes!

Jenny as a blonde

Well this is a new look! Not sure it's a good look, but it's certainly a new one :) I can't see me leaving the house wearing this unless I'm going to a costume party, but it's good to have options...

The wig itself is surprisingly well made considering how little I paid for it (£3.99 plus postage). It has quite a realistic looking scalp, it's adjustable inside (not that I need that, since my massive bonce just about fits inside), and the "hair" itself feels nice. I'd happily buy the same style in a less bottle-blonde colour.

Wigging Out

This week's flash-in-the-pan obsession has been with wigs. I get these obsessions regularly - they burn bright and fast and wink out in a week or two. It makes life fun, and I learn loads about whatever it is I'm obsessing about, although I do also spend quite a bit of money and end up with more things in the house than I have storage space for.

Anyway, this week it is wigs. For some reason I decided that I wanted one, so the research and shopping began. The shopping part was easy enough to begin with: eBay. The research part was more interesting. I have learnt so much about wig wearing in the last few days. For the record, the biggest hits that I found for wig wearers on Google were:
- chemotherapy patients
- alopecia sufferers (and other sufferers of conditions that lead to complete hair loss due to medical reasons)
- judges in the British court system
- men in drag

I felt kind of guilty surfing for frivolous fun wig-wearing information when I kept coming up against people who really need them. I know several people who have lost their hair because of chemo and I can't imagine how they felt about it. I seem to remember that my uncle had alopecia too at one point but I can't remember how much hair he lost - it's just a memory tucked away in the back of my head somewhere. But it is heartening to read how much women's lives in particular have improved when they have got a hairstyle back, even if their own hair has fallen out. And it's sweet to read about the cross-dressers and how much it means to them to be able to pass as a woman because their hair looks good.

Anyway. Wigs come in the obviously-fake fun type, like the bright blue or tinsel types you see on people at parties, and the ones that want to look like real hair. Of the latter, the two types are real human hair and synthetics. You might think that real human hair is superior, but not necessarily so! The very best type of human wig hair is from undyed, unprocessed, European hair, particularly from people such as Italian peasants (apparently) who take great care of their hair but do not use chemicals on it. Eastern European hair is also popular, probably because the people share a similar makeup. Actually that last is just a guess, but Italian and Romanian are so similar - both Romance languages - that there was obviously a link between those two countries anyway, so why not a shared hair heritage? The wig hair can have the cuticles stripped off it so it doesn't tangle, which is a benefit, and of course if it's human hair it can be styled in the usual ways, with straightening irons, curlers, perms, whatever.

Synthetic wig hair is surprisingly realistic these days. Not your common-or-garden joke shop wig hair, of course, but the stuff that is designed to pass as natural. And it doesn't need to be styled, either - if you buy a wig with flowing waves, or tight curls, or poker straight, it'll stay that way when it's washed. No faffing around with styling tools and hairspray. Bonus!

I've been going mad on eBay ordering various styles from various ranges. The first few that I ordered were the cheapest available on eBay (99p for the wig, plus £10 postage from Hong Kong). They haven't arrived yet, so you'll just have to wait and see what they turn out like. I also ordered some more expensive ones that were almost certainly the cheap ones from Hong Kong, but with the benefit of being sold by a woman just a few miles away from here. I asked if I could get my purchase in time for the weekend, and her husband delivered the parcel in person at our house this morning! Now that's good customer service. And I got a "bargain" - not cheap, but way cheaper than retail price - on a top of the range long-haired synthetic wig that should be here by the middle of next week. I'll be interested to see what the difference is between them all as far as quality, comfort, and believeability go.

Here is a picture of me (couple of tangles, but I was too lazy to re-take it once I realised the problem) in the one that I wore to lunch today as a laugh. I think I look pretty good in it!
Maybe in a few days I'll look back on this and go, "Wow, that looks awful. What was I thinking?!", but for the moment I'm happy. I feel very glam with these flowing locks right down my back.