Party wigs (and such things)

The other day I was in Wal-Mart and randomly passed through the clearance Halloween section (well, ok...it wasn't random, I was looking for cheap candy) and saw their selection of cheap costume wigs. This made me a bit nostalgic, because thinking about it... when I first started making costumes, there was a very minimal selection of wigs to choose from. You had the ultra-low-quality halloween wigs that would show up in stores around halloween, you had the slightly less cheap but still pretty horrible "party wig" stuff that you could find in, well, party stores, as well as the halloween costume stores that pop up during the season, and in places like Spencers that also sell (sold? I haven't been in one in years, so I'm not sure) costumes and accessories, and then you had wigs that you could find for cosmetic reasons in dedicated stores, usually fairly pricey and nothing crazy in color or style. Sure, there was that one website here or there, or a store somewhere that might have some more eccentric wigs, but for the most part you'd be lucky to see more than a handful of "unnatural" colors or styles at many of those places.

Anyway, we all made do with some pretty terrible wigs, if wigs at all, because we had no choice in the matter. I can even remember "stocking up" on halloween wigs when they showed up because I didn't know if or when I might need a certain color and not be able to find it anywhere when I needed it because once I went to the 2 or 3 places I knew of, that was it. Things have come a long way and I know I am pretty spoiled now by being able to go to multiple sites online including eBay of all places with a color and style in mind and have multiple choices to look through, even when it's something a bit off-beat, and that's not even accounting for all of the sellers that sell pre-styled mass-produced "character" wigs, or the cosplayer-oriented sites and sellers.

Well, I've rambled enough. Point is, the wigs were dirt-cheap due to said clearance and just out of some sort of curiosity and misplaced nostalgia I bought one for $2 just to see if they were just as bad as I remembered. Then I wanted to see if there was any way to actually work around the known flaws of the products. For no real reason other than just messing around because I was bored. That's kind of how I am.

So I got this wig:


First off, I knew that it wouldn't look anything like the package, they never do.

In fact, it looked like this:


Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaah some things never change.

Cheap party wigs always have that odd sort of "sparkle" to the fiber, I guess it must be the material they use for the fiber as I only ever see it on these kind of wigs. However, the fiber was a lot softer than I remembered, so at least they've done something about that. You'll never know what they're made of because you're lucky if the tag even says "100% synthetic fiber", most of the time it's just a barcode and tells you that it was made somewhere in asia.

So first off, they almost always have that flip and crease on the side from being folded over and crammed into a tiny bag for so long. All that takes is usually a gentle brushing (don't want to be too vigorous, I've had some of them have the wefts start pulling out in huge chunks, right out of the bag) and then a rinse in warm water, maybe with some conditioner if you want, I know I used some. Then I touched up a few trouble spots with steam because there were a few really set-in flippy bits that wouldn't stay down.
Used some scissors to even out the bangs since they were amazingly jagged yet blunt at the same time.



Ok, that looks more like the package image.

Of course, now, what do I do with a cheap bright orange bob wig? After casting around in my head for a character that had orange hair that I could possibly style this into, the only one I could think of was Tasuki from Fushigi Yuugi. Yeah, it's way too bright, but whatever. Let's do this.

So first off, there's usually two major flaws with this kind of wig that affects styling it in any way other than how it came packaged.

A) The wefts on the back of the head are extremely thin and very far apart
B) There is extra hair radiating from the the top of the crown to help cover this, but only slightly.

Oddly, despite the fact that this wig was using a cheaper kind of fiber, it was very heat resistant, much more so than usual wigs. Considering that the pricier wigs often have heat-resistance as a feature, I found this amusing.

So first, I pinned up the hair in a few sections trying to figure out just how bad it was. It was pretty bad:



On top of that, the quality was exceptionally bad, there were wefts not even sewn down, parts where they extended past and just hung off the wig like a tail, and parts where they didn't even attempt to go in a straight line. Still, got a general idea of what could be done with it. (Not much).

Using a razor comb and thinning scissors, tried to chop it up just a bit without going too deep or thin. Basically just went over it overall since the whole thing was blunt and uneven in a really unappealing way. Pulled a little bit of the top hair forward to add to the bangs and tried to make them more choppy and less like 80's girl bangs. Also cut off the bizarre dangling weft tails.

Considered the wefts a bit, and thinking about it, a lot of costume wigs (like the New Look New Punk for instance) also have widely spaced wefts and they add volume at the roots to cover for it. Figured I could give it a shot, normally I hate when wigs come like that because it's a pain to deal with, but in this case, what is there to lose. Accomplished this by teasing the hair with backcombing; basically you grab a section of the hair and pull it out firmly from the wig, and then take a fine-toothed comb and comb downwards along the last few inches of the hair towards the "roots", in a few quick firm strokes. Normally you wouldn't want to do this with a good wig (or even your own hair, hello 1980s) because it weakens the strand and causes breakage as well as being a pain to get out later, but in this case, what the heck.
Well, it worked, it added just enough volume at the roots to move the hair around a bit without showing gaping spaces and wig netting, even on my head. (Important: always test your styling periodically on your own head instead of a wig head, especially with cheaper wigs, as there is almost always some "give" to the mesh cap that you won't see on the smaller wig head that once you place it on your head, will invariably spread apart and give you unexpected results, if you're doing something major like going from short to long, or down to up/out. In extremely low-quality wigs like this, the cap is just like a loose mesh bag with a fold you can actually grab in your hand at the base of the skull, which will be pulled taut on your head and needs to be accounted for.) Gave a little extra poof and some hairspray at the crown since Tasuki has that weird sort of poofbump to his hair.
Unfortunately, couldn't take too much of the length off anywhere because I needed it to hide another spot when I repositioned it (the temples/sides of the wig were especially bad for this, they always are)

Finally, there was a dense roll of curls at the nape of the neck, steamed those down a bit in hopes of getting the Tasukimullet. Didn't work too well as the fiber didn't completely unroll even when I blasted it, and even if it was perfectly straight it wouldn't be quite long enough. Thought "well, I could get some loose hair in this obnoxious orange since I know I've seen it at the wig store for $2 and weft it in" and then mentally berated myself for trying to add extra work and money to a pointless throw-away wig adventure.



So anyway, when it was all said and done I pinned it into place and used a bit of hairspray and a tiny bit of hair glue and there you go.







Is it an awesome (or even 100% accurate) Tasuki wig? Hell no.
Is it finding semi-usefulness in even something cheap? Yes.
Is it trying to dress up a pig in fancy clothing? Maybe. Depends on your definition. I certainly wouldn't use this with an OMG-I-spent-50-hours-making-this costume.

Either way, it just goes to show that while you won't have fantastic results, you can still do something with even the cheap wigs, that I suppose is better than nothing, when you can't find or afford something better.