Now’s the time for stocking up on wigs
Many Black women are changing their hair routine to avoid high-risk salons
When Mia Birdsong was around 8 or 9, she would prance around in cowboy boots and a spiky Tina Turner-style wig.
As a tween, she coveted fake manes in a wig store for their sleekness and eminent manageability, compared with the vigorous multitexture hair she had inherited from her Black father and white mother.
“You know the story: Black kid with white mom who doesn’t know how to do her hair,” said Birdsong, an author in Oakland, California. “I would have these big bangs I’d do with a curling brush. Basically, the front and sides would be straight. And the back wouldn’t.”
Wigs give the illusion of all-over-the-head uniformity, she thought. “It was all about, like, long flowing hair, too,” she said. “I was super into wigs that gave me white women’s straight hair.”
Those childhood yearnings aside, it wasn’t until July, almost four decades later, that Birdsong, 47, bought her first wig that wasn’t for a special occasion or play.
Actually, she bought six, all with generous and sleek bangs. Among them was a Twiggy-esque short number in orange Creamsicle colors; another with electric blue waves; and three basic black wigs with names like “Mariella” or “Flirt.” They arrived with another delivery: a machete. With her wigs, a giant knife and a stocked pantry, she declared herself ready for intransigent shrubby weeds in “the garden, honoring my Jamaican roots, and the apocalypse,” she said.
Birdsong has been unable to see her hairdresser since March because of the pandemic, and she wanted to look presentable in
Zoom meetings. During them, she had been absentmindedly trimming her curly hair, and soon cut beyond the forgiving length of even the shortest ponytail.
She’s one of many women in the United States, particularly Black women, who have changed their hair routines and stocked up on wigs. They fear warnings about hair salons as potentially high-risk transmission sites and sometimes glacially slow delivery and spotty supplies from online retailers.
Holly Stepp, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, found herself in the club of wig novitiates. Stepp, 46, knows how to make a “relaxer” last. She typically gets her chin-length bob chemically straightened every four months, stretching well past the conventional salon wisdom that she should get a “retouch” to smooth new growth every six to eight weeks.
Stepp has worn her hair natural only briefly, during college. She didn’t want to take her chances if the pandemic lingered and she couldn’t get a fresh perm. Unable to see her hairdresser, she went online and, for the first time in her life, shopped for wigs.
At the six-week mark when many people with relaxed hair would be headed back to the salon, she felt the siren call of Instagram marketing. “You see all these ads for wigs, the hair companies, and the influencers showing themselves unboxing their wigs and how quickly they can put them on,” she said. “I
thought: ‘You know what? That could be a thing to do.’ ”
Stepp bought about $600 worth of midpriced wigs — five conservative lace-front bobs that “looked reasonably like my own hair” — and all the accouterments: tweezers, scissors, glue, canvas stands and tripods to prop them up. She promptly discovered that, despite her ideas of plopand-go, the wig installation learning curve is steep. After numerous YouTube tutorials and efforts to get the hairline right, she gave the wigs to her 27-year-old niece, who Stepp said “will wear a platinum blond” to work.
Even as many Black women are transitioning to wigs or buying multiples,
those wigs aren’t as easily obtained as they were just months ago. Chantell Carrtherol is a Los Angeles stylist and wigmaker who learned how to make hairpieces on Broadway and also helps clients customize wigs she designed.
Her premium handmade wigs can sell for up to $6,000. Since July, she said, sales at Her’s by Chantell have dropped 75%. Economically uncertain buyers have delayed purchases of luxury wigs, but she finds it challenging to source the hair she needs to fulfill new orders.
Carrtherol, 39, had trouble getting the lace for the cooler, lighter lace-front wigs that are popular.
South Korea is a major player in lace manufactur
ing, and its production was delayed when the coronavirus raged through the country earlier this year. Switzerland sold out of lace for a time.
Lace closures — typically, a horseshoe-shaped piece onto which the hair is sewn — have been hard to find. Prices have spiked accordingly; a square foot of sturdy lace can now top $120, up about 20%. Hair shipments from the two vendors in Asia that Carrtherol uses slowed to a business-killing trickle.
“With one company, I put in an order in July and I’m still waiting,” she said. “It’s been really challenging to get any concrete answers or real information from the suppliers. If you can’t promise a client, what do you have?”
Arthur Ramlal, a consultant for the China International Hair Fair from the Netherlands, said geopolitics, trade disputes and the pandemic have created a uniquely frustrating situation for hair vendors and buyers, be they corporations, small-business owners or consumers.
“India had a very strict lockdown, and something like 80% of the hair for wigs and extensions come from India, mostly from the temples” where people donate hair, Ramlal said. Furthermore, he said, the political relationship between China and India “is not so good at this moment, with boycotts” and threats of impending trade wars.
Antionette Kerr, a writer and nonprofit media consultant from Lake Norman, North Carolina, is watching for any hints that her wig pipeline is further endangered.
On March 28, she ordered her favorite wig online. The model — an
Isis “Brown Sugar” human hair blend that often costs less than $40 — arrived a full two months later, on May 30. She searched around online, but it was consistently sold out, except in colors she balked at wearing during her frequent online trainings.
“I went to HairSisters .com,” Kerr said. “The selection was slim. They only had purple left. And I love purple hair.” But it “just wasn’t what I wanted to wear during webinars” she was facilitating, she said.
“For a couple of weeks in the beginning, Amazon was only delivering ‘essential’ items,” Kerr said. “And it was freaking me out. Because don’t they know my hair is essential? Though I did get toilet paper then — for $30. Ridiculous, ridiculous.”