A WIG WITH A DIFFERENCE

A WIG WITH ADIFFERENCE

By Zahava Mimran

It’s a regular evening, yet on a small, non-descript street in Hendon, there’s a bustling queue of Jewish women, extending all the way down the road and around the corner. Is it a cut-price clothing sale? A new restaurant opening? A free giveaway? No, they tell you happily, we’re queueing to buy a wig. Aha! A wig. But why the sudden popularity? What’s so great about this wig? Oh, we’re waiting to buy an affordable wig.

The mitzva of covering our hair is one of the most basic mitzvot that a Jewish woman begins to do when she gets married, and it’s one that we perform with joy. However, in today’s world, with women often holding down more commitments and spending more time outside the house than ever, it is important that we feel good about ourselves and the image that we portray. Yet for those of us who can’t - or won’t - spend the required thousands of pounds necessary to buy a beautiful wig locally, it can be a difficult task. Enter China.

When Ali Express opened, it forged a valuable connection between the Chinese market and consumers around the world. People have since been able to purchase almost anything directly from Chinese producers at minimal prices, with just a few quick clicks. Including wigs – thanks to Rachelli Lerner. A long-time teacher and assistant head at a local primary school, Rachelli was used to buying wigs from her usual salon, which she would have custom made due to her difficult hair colour. However, in 2016, after purchasing an expensive custom wig which she was unhappy with, she decided to take the plunge and buy one online from China. Knowing nothing about hair, wigs, or the process, she set about searching for a wig company with just a few arbitrary rules that she had made for herself, such as that she wouldn’t spend over £300, or that if her contact asked her for payment more than three times, she wouldn’t use their company. With working hours in China starting at around 1 am and ending at 10 am UK time, she spent hours every night on Ali Express, and Google, reading, researching, and contacting over twenty people. Eventually, she came across a woman who fit all of her rules, and, biting the bullet, she ordered her wig.

Her wig arrived on the very day that she was scheduled to fly to Israel. It looked beautiful, and Rachelli straightened it, put it onto her head, and flew - no highlights, no baby hairs; just straight out of the box. After receiving countless compliments for it, and loving the way it looked on her, she then ordered one for both her mother and sister when she returned to the UK, and there it ended. Or so she thought. Soon after she had ordered the wigs, a woman approached Rachelli, asking to try on her wig as it was a similar colour to her own. Although a somewhat strange request, she acquiesced, explaining that it had been bought for just a few hundred pounds from China. The woman tried it on, and when it looked like she really loved it, Rachelli offered to sell it to her and just purchase another. At that point the woman burst out crying. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘I’ve been trying to save for a wig for 12 years, yet each time my envelope begins to fill up, I somehow always need to take money out for something else. In 12 years, I haven’t been able to save for one wig!’ Then and there, Rachelli sold her the wig and ordered another for herself.

It was at that point that Rachelli felt that she had a moral obligation to use her knowledge to help other women do the same. Initially, she started out by helping doctors who wanted sports wigs to wear during surgery. She would keep one wig at her home which women could come and see, and when someone bought it, she would order another to replace it. However, very quickly people began to hear about her. The Facebook group she set up expanded massively, and she became a household name, with more and more women looking to buy a ‘Rachelli wig’. ‘I absolutely never dreamt that it would become anything like it is nowadays’, she tells me. ‘I just didn’t foresee this flood of women interested in buying the wigs from me, often without even trying it on in their colour or size.’

As the popularity of the wigs grew, Rachelli realised that her model of stocking one wig at a time was no longer enough for the number of women who were interested in seeing them. She sat down together with her husband and they worked on a plan to make the process easier and more efficient. After filling in an immense amount of paperwork, they set themselves up as a government social enterprise, which allows them to work quite similarly to a non-profit organisation. They bought a range of fifteen different wigs which women can come and try on at their weekly open night, and whom can then either buy the wig on the spot, or order one for themselves. If they take it, Rachelli will order another one to fill its place, but if they choose to order one, Rachelli will help them by placing the order.

‘For the enterprise’, Rachelli says, ‘We had to prove that we were empowering religious women in the community to be in touch with their religion and society. It sounds really official but by allowing women to buy

cheaper wigs, that is essentially what we are doing. We also work with a lot of people who suffer with alopecia, both Jewish and non-Jewish. I actually just sent off a wig to Slovenia – to the daughter of a secretary of a local woman here who told her about it.’

As a social enterprise, all transactions that take place in her house go through the accounts and are taxed, which means that if a woman buys a wig on open night, she will pay slightly more than if she ordered it. ‘Some women really need to try on a wig, and see what they are getting’, explains Rachelli, ‘Others maybe won’t find the exact colour, length or style that they were looking for in my collection, so they’ll order one once they’ve tried some on and gotten a feel for the wigs. Interestingly, the younger women choose to order more than older ones, although that may be because they have so many friends who have done it and are happy with them, that they are more confident in the process.’

With over 2000 wigs ordered through Rachelli, and counting, she holds that buying a wig is very much a mazel. ‘A woman might come in for a band fall, and she’ll walk out with a lace top pony; totally not what she came for. It’s very much a shidduch, and you never quite know what you’ll end up with until you’ve picked it.’ Yet there really is something for everyone, and women from all over the world contact her, from all walks of lives. ‘I actually just sent a wig off to a Jewish woman who works for Chabad’, she tells me. ‘She was situated in an army base on an island off the coast of Japan. Ironically though, the shipping was an absolute nightmare – she had to send it through America!’

Despite all the benefits, buying a wig from China is definitely not risk free. Aside from the fact that Chinese companies are not regulated like companies in most first world countries, there are also plenty of scammers. ‘You get all types of things,’ Rachelli states, ‘There are companies who will blend human and synthetic hair so you do have to look out for that, and there was one very well-known company that was producing lovely wigs, but one wig in ten was actually a dud. There’s nothing much you can do, unless you pay via PayPal, however most companies will only take bank transfers. Yet on the other hand, when you buy a wig locally, you can spend thousands of pounds and not be happy with it. Here, you’re risking the odd £500 or so’. It’s really not much more than that, although prices have definitely gone up since her first £300 wig. Rachelli finds that every 1st of January, the prices go up a little, and of course, like with everything, Covid has also had an impact on prices. ‘When they reopened after lockdown, workers from Vietnam and South Korea were not allowed into the country, which meant they had to pay for Chinese labour which is more expensive’, Rachelli explains, ‘So they put the price up, and obviously that hasn’t gone back down. However, although it depends on the amount of hair, length, and on how much you customise, you’re still really not paying a lot. I actually just sold 3 bandfalls recently which were priced in the low £400’s’.

When it comes to choosing a manufacturer, Rachelli still deals with the original company from whom she ordered her first wig, although she has tried out others as well. ‘You see, China doesn’t quite have the same data protection rules as we do’, she notes wryly, ‘So I often get random messages from other companies who want to sell to me. At the moment, I use one company for Brazilian hair and one for European, and then there are a few other companies whose prices are a little steeper, so I’ll use those only when they go on sale.

At the beginning, I used to actually give out the companies’ contact information so that people could order wigs for themselves, however I found that women were quoting me and using my name to threaten the companies, which began to ruin my relationship with them. Ultimately, I decided that it was more important for me to be able to keep these suppliers and help the masses, then to risk losing them over difficult customers. Therefore I no longer give out their details, and instead I make all the orders, leaving the customer to just pay the invoice. It’s definitely not the easier way – I tend to do all my messaging with China before I have to go to work - between 5.30 and 7 am when they are still open, but this way I can keep a good relationship with the manufacturers and continue to help women. There is a small administration cost for facilitating this, however if people can’t afford to pay, it is waived. For most people though, they see it as a plus; they like to know that they are buying through someone who has an established rapport with the companies, who knows the ins and outs of hair colour, cap sizes, and all the other intricacies’.

So what are you actually getting when you buy a wig from China? ‘Pretty much the same as a regular middleprice wig that you can buy locally’, Rachelli shrugs. ‘Although, obviously if you buy a top-range wig, where the sheitel-macher has flown to Ukraine and handpicked the hair, you will most likely be getting something that has a different feel to it – you can’t compare to that. The Chinese companies claim that they use only virgin, unprocessed hair, however they do dye it so it is definitely processed in that way. Ultimately though, we have no way of knowing, which is why I always make sure to include the word allegedly when discussing hair. I actually once met up with one of my contacts – my husband and I were flying through Singapore en-route to Australia recently, and she was holidaying there. We met up for a coffee and I heard a little about the manufacturing process, which is absolutely fascinating. Most wig manufacturers are based in Qingdao in the Shandong province of China – it’s really in the middle of nowhere. Apparently, you have thirty to forty women involved in creating each wig – like a real Henry Ford production line, with each woman doing one skill’. And obviously, labour is cheap in China, so the main expense for these companies is the hair that they use. Rachelli points out that that’s also why they’ll often try to get away with putting in as little hair as possible; as Chinese hair isn’t suitable for our wigs, they have to pay to import it from other countries, which is a big expense for them. However, they do sell wigs in a variety of thicknesses, which they measure in percentages. ‘Although that is rather arbitrary’, she concedes, ‘As what is it a percentage of? And 130 percent with one company may be the same as 150 percent for another. However, you can request thicker or thinner wigs, and I have found that the European hair company I use tend to produce thicker wigs, so if someone wants a really full one, I would recommend using them. We actually

Once a woman has chosen the hair type and length, it’s down to the colour and extras. If you choose a basic colour without highlights, it’s pretty simple - although their colour scale is a little darker than ours. However, it’s then up to each person to decide if they want to go for adding highlights there, or if they prefer to do that in their home salon. ‘You do it there, it costs you thirty dollars, compared to the hundred or so you would spend in your local salon. On the other hand, if you are very specific about the tones you want added and their placement, I would advise doing it locally. I’ve found that the companies there don’t really understand hair colour like we do. When literally everyone has dark brown or black hair, it’s hard to really understand different shades of blonde, ginger, or even brown, and how not everyone’s complexion will suit the different colours’. For those who do choose to do the highlighting at home, Rachelli will often recommend sending it to Chana Levy, who works locally in London. ‘I’ve come to know her over the years of working with her,’ she tells me, ‘And she’s extremely easy to work with. Also, there’s always an element of uncertainty about how a wig will pick up dye, which can sometimes cause disappointing results. I know that Chana’s dyeing works with the hair and you can rely on the process. Sometimes, women who live very ‘out of town’ order a wig, and they don’t have a salon that they can take it to for dyeing, so I’ll have them to order it to me, I’ll send it onto Chana, and we’ll send it off to them once it’s ready.’

Other extras, such as adding baby hairs and bleaching the knots in lace tops are definitely better off being done locally as well. ‘Chinese people don’t understand baby hairs, and they’ll often put in this very short, fine fringe, which means you’ll then have to pay money to have it taken out and redone,’ Rachelli says. ‘And they also don’t really understand the importance of bleaching the knots in lace tops – if you ask them to do it, you may just find that the lace turns orange. You have to remember, they’ve never seen Jewish people, I’m not sure they understand that we really wear these wigs all the time, and how essential they are in our every-day life.’

Overall, the low prices of wigs from China mean that the process of buying a wig becomes less daunting. There is less money involved, so if something goes wrong it’s not such a colossal disaster. It also frees up money so that women can have a few wigs at once for the price of one – so for women who like to change their hairstyles a lot, these wigs are perfect. It’s not just the women themselves who benefit from the lower prices though. Rachelli’s husband has had men stop him on the street, thanking him for enabling them to buy their wife a wig, something that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford.

For all the benefits, Rachelli is careful to warn that it is not always a reliable process. For a start, you never know what you’re going to get until it comes, and then there is no comeback whatsoever. However, if you order through her, it is definitely less risky, as the companies have a good relationship with her so usually try to rectify when things go wrong. ‘When we first tried out lace tops,’ she recalls, ‘We made an order and they were really lovely. Then, when we reordered, the second batch came and they were terrible. I told them that either they take back the wigs or I can’t work with them anymore, so they took them back. They are usually very supportive and friendly, they know that this is an enterprise and not a business, and they send me little presents every so often - they even sent me something when I had my last baby!

It is important to remember though, that the companies don’t always understand things like timing; they don’t really get that if a kallah orders a wig, she absolutely needs it in time for her wedding. To be honest, they must think we are a little crazy,’ she says, ‘I really would love to go there and visit someday so they understand who we are, so that they see me wearing a wig in real life.

There have been occasions when things do go wrong, yet I make it clear from the outset that this is not a business, and that I can’t accept responsibility for anything, although obviously, I do try to help where I can. The most reliable thing is to always use PayPal, however one of the companies I deal with were themselves once scammed by a woman who bought a wig from them, via me. She complained about the wig to PayPal, got her money back from them, but then didn’t send back the wig like she was supposed to. That company now no longer accept PayPal, to protect themselves against such incidents, yet it’s a massive pity for everyone else who have now lost that valuable protection! People don’t always realise that that their relatively small actions of dishonesty, can affect hundreds of other women wanting wigs. If this woman had shipped her wig back, Paypal could still be used, giving assurance to many more.’

Apart from the buying process, Rachelli admits that it might be hard for some women to order a wig from her. Some women are a little more nervous, or they find it hard to visualise the finished wig; they really need to sit in a salon and have a hair stylist talk them through it – something that Rachelli is not! Many need the come-back and all the extras that are included. ‘On the other hand,’ she points out, ‘If you do order a wig and aren’t happy with it you can simply sell it on. There’s almost always someone who is happy to buy a wig that they can try on first.’

With over 2000 wigs ordered through Rachelli, there are a multitude of grateful women around the world. ‘People stop my parents in the street, they stop my husband, they even stop my in laws. I get comments all the time, wherever I go, either expressing gratitude or telling me that they have been receiving compliments about their wigs. And it’s funny because I really don’t think that what I’m doing is such a big deal. Of course I could add more per wig, but they wouldn’t be as cheap. This way I don’t owe anyone a service, and I don’t have the responsibility that comes with owning a business.’ It’s very much a social enterprise, and it’s a family one as well. Her children know that one night a week the house has to be spic and span by 7 pm, and that it’s going to be a busy evening. Yet Rachelli finds it all worth it, and she tells me, ‘I know that if I am supposed to make more money, Hashem will send the money elsewhere.’