What are wigs made of?
Wigs are made in two different ways. Either using real hair, which is hair from all different parts of the world - the best quality being Italian hair - but obviously that would be the most expensive as well. The other type of wig we can buy is synthetic, which is a fiber. To call it a plastic is not really a very good descriptive word, but in reality that's actually more or less what it is. I've been out to Thailand where they make these wigs and the technology is fantastic. Nowadays, even I find it almost impossible with the naked eye to decipher which is real hair, and which is acrylic because the technology is so fantastic these days. Everyone's got this impresson in their mind of what a wig is, and the one that probably jumps out most is of a little old lady with a tea cozy on her head, and certainly in my generation that's what wigs looked like. Nowadays, if you customize a wig for someone it's almost undetectable that it's not their hair. I usually advise chemotherapy patients to have a synthetic wig, whereas with alopecia patients, sometimes their hair will never grow back so I advise them to have a real hair wig. Because they have to adopt that, it's part of them, whereas a wig for a chemo patient is usually a six to nine month period, and a wig will probably last that long. Wigs do wear out, even real hair wigs after a period of time because they get worn out. For the most part I advise synthetic wigs, because the other great thing about synthetic wigs is literally, you take it off, you dip it in cold soapy water, you brush it through, you let it dry, you put it back on, and it's identical to the way you bought it or the way it was styled. Whereas with a real hair wig, there's a lot more maintenance. You actually have to shampoo it, blow dry it, you can even color it, but there's a lot more effort and work involved. For the most part I usually advise synthetic wigs.
