Beginner'S Guide To Wigs And Toppers Part 1

Hey guys, i'm here with another wig video today, we are focusing on part one of a several part series about what you need to know before you purchase your first wig or topper. I do want to say a special thank you to everybody on the wig studio. One facebook page for submitting their questions about what they wish they would have known before they started this journey uh. It was really helpful of your questions, so thank you guys very much. The first thing that i want to get into is hair density. Um hair comes just like most like your normal hair, your bio hair. Some people have thicker individual strands of hair. Some people have thinner strands of hair. Wigs come in a 100 to a 180 density, so the general rule of thumb. There is the bigger the number. The bigger the hair um, so this is a topper that i'm currently wearing the top smart by jon renau and if you do want to know more about that, i'll put a link in the description to this particular review. I did on this piece um, but generally you're, going to want to go with something you're comfortable with. So, if you're used to big hair by all means, go ahead and grab that 150 to 180 density um. But if you like, the more sleeker, more thinner, looks and by thin i don't mean unhealthy thin, but like this, this is going to be more along the lines of 100 to 120. So again, bigger the number bigger the hair uh before you get into your wig journey after you decide how big of a piece you want, you need to find out. How big is your head? What size cap do you need now? Caps do come in everything from petite on the smallest end as well as extra large, so you need to find out where you s you fit in there. Most caps are an average size, so the medium, but some companies do have smaller petite uh, for instance like this envy piece here. This is petite page by envy and i'll show you a little more about her in a second, but she is a more petite cap, whereas my alessandra here is a technically an average cat, but she fits me kind of big. So it all just depends on your head size. What you need to measure is a measuring tape, a flexible measuring tape and i'm going to put a link in the description. I'M not going to go over it too much here, just for the sake of time, but there's four different measurements. You want to take on your head to find out your precise measurement for your cap. Just remember that all wigs, duke most wigs do come with industrial and i'm sorry adjustable strap inside of them. That will make it so that you uh you can fit them to your head a little bit better. So don't stress too much about this, but it is definitely important to know your head size toppers same thing when you're buying a topper and we'll get all in toppers in another video but you're going to want. Instead of measuring your head you're going to want to measure the size of your loss on your hair, so, for example, mine is in my parting area, so i would want to measure how wide my losses, as well as what the length of my losses to make Sure that the topper covers the entire area that i'm trying to hide okay, so we talked about density and measuring. The next thing i want to talk about. Uh is the volume of pieces. So a lot of you guys ask about permatease. Um permatease is exactly what it sounds like it's a permanent tease, that's in the hair now in wigs. That translates to these little tiny hairs that stick up at the top of your wigs and they prop up the longer hair in order to give it some volume. So it'll do and i know you won't be able to see it and that's good. You don't want to see the permatease in a good wig, but if you could see it in this wig, you would see these tiny itty-bitty little hairs. Sticking straight up out of the wig, then the hair lays on top of it and by doing that, it pushes the hair up in volume when you're looking for permatease, whether or not your weight has permatease you're going to want to look here for this, this lace Area through here, you can feel it it's a little bit thicker than the rest of the wig. That'S the permatease area. Now, when you are washing your wigs that have permatease, please don't get scared. You didn't ruin your wig. If you start seeing all of these hairs. Just sticking straight up like bristles out of the top of your wig, that's the permatease and as soon as your wig dries, the this longer hair will lay on top of it and you won't be able to see it. So you didn't ruin your wig. It'S perfectly fine, um, just wan na make sure you guys know that permatease is great, especially for those of us who don't have a lot of volume um. I wouldn't get anything that had a ton personally for myself, but i don't have any problem with a little bit of permatease. The next thing you're going to want to know is what type of hair do you want? Do you want a synthetic piece which tends to be a little bit more cheaper or do you want a human hair piece which tends to run a lot more expensive, there's drawbacks, there's pros and cons to both fibers uh, for example, we'll talk about human hair? First, that's what everybody wants! Uh, it's gon na be the most realistic to your particular hair. You can get different densities again different textures for your hair, but it is going to have you're going to deal with the elements just like you would with your other hair. So it's going to react to humidity it's going to get kind of ratty in the rain. If you do end up, if you end up getting wet so make sure you pay attention to that, where you live might dictate how much uh you desire an actual human hair piece, um human hair tends to last longer as well. Generally, you can keep a piece. A couple of years: actually so they, the investments you make, is quite a lot into the thousands sometimes, but they do last longer, synthetics last anywhere between four to six months, depending on how often you wear them, i wear mine uh in a rotation, so my synthetic Pieces do tend to last a little bit longer. So if you are able to purchase a few different pieces that you like, then each piece will have a longer life because of that because you're not wearing it all the time. We'Ll also talk about the care of the wigs in another video. How you care for your synthetic wigs will also determine the life of them, but we'll get that to that another video for sure synthetic hair also comes in the heat defiant and you can, if you have a heat, defiant synthetic you can style it up to. I think about 320 350 with curlers and straighteners, but the texture does change with the heat defiant. I personally don't mind them on shorter wigs. I don't like them a lot on longer wigs. They do tend to tangle, but even with regular synthetics, you still can heat style. You just use steam instead of a dry heat. The steam works great. So if you need to add a little bit of a curl or a little flip out to your wig, you certainly can do that even if it's not heat, defiant and i'll make sure to teach you guys how to do that. If you don't already know, okay, so uh cap construction, this is the biggest part that i wanted to talk to you guys to give about there's a lot of questions about cat construction. So this is my petite page by envy. This is a basic cap construction, as you can see on the front here, you don't have any monofilament which we'll talk about just a second. You simply have this lace, that's covering up some of the permatease, and then you have this area here which well i mean, i guess technically, that's a little bit of a monofilament, but it only has this one area for a part. You can't part it anywhere. You would like some basic caps: don't even have that they'll just have the lace going all the way across and you're stuck with, whatever part was put into the wig and a lot of times. They'Ll have a different, sometimes what they have what's called polyurethane part, which is a completely non-see-through paneling that comes through here and it mimics scalp. You can't see through it at all, so your your wig grips, you won't see through it. It just looks like a piece of skin, so those are the polyurethane sometimes come in basic caps uh. This one does have a little bit of the monofilament where i can put a part in it, but it doesn't change. They also have wefting basic caps and most of even the high end caps do have wefting. This does allow for airflow really. It is quite cool. However, some people who don't have any hair at all might find these a little itchy. I personally don't have any problems with it basic caps. A lot of them do not have felt ear tabs. As you can tell this, one does not have any felt or velvet ear tabs it's just this lace. Again, it's just a comfort thing. This one doesn't bother me, but it might bother some that have more sensitive skin. This also doesn't have an extended nape as you'll see in just a second on some other ones. It just cuts off right there. This is a real. This is actually a shorter style. So i understand why that's not extended and then it does have adjustment straps, but these aren't, in my opinion, the greatest of strap. It'S more like a bra style, strap um and then, if once you cinch it, sometimes these guys will hang out on the bottom of your wig. So be very careful. I'M probably just going to cut mine out to tell you the truth on this particular piece, because i don't use them. That is an option. If you don't need to tighten it yourself. So that's a basic cap. The next thing we have is a monofilament cap. So we're going to look at alessandra here, alessandra has a single monofilament! That'S what this piece is here now. This is a rather wide piece of monofilament which will allow you to part anywhere in this direction. So this sits right on this top of my head. So, probably about from here to here, i can part in any direction i want there. Monofilament does a great job of mimicking the scalp, it's a mesh like material that does disguise a little bit underneath. So, if i put my hand under here, you guys will be able to see that you can see through it a little bit. So you can see if you have a cap um or if you have a very dark colored wig grip, you'd be able to see through here so make sure you are trying to get as light of cap. That fits your skin tone or as dark of a cap that fits your skin tone, but the monofilament does a great job there. It also helps with that mesh to hide some of the knotting, especially if the hair is not particularly dark. You'Re not going to see a lot of knotting. This is going to do a great job of mimicking, your actual scalp, all right with monofilament. There is also double monofilament. Now this is tatum tatum by amore. She has a double monofilament, as you can tell. That is much darker, much less see-through than the one that is on the alessandra here. So this is a single. This is a double monofilament. That'S going to do an even better job of hiding anything underneath. So your wig groups, your your caps they're, not really going to show too much through here. It'S going to do a great job of being able to disguise any of that underneath your hair. If i flip her over and put my hand underneath, you can see what a great job she does at mimicking, your actual scalp all right, there is also silk top, which i don't actually have here, but silk top is pretty much. It looks very similar on the inside as the double monofilament. However, the silk top is even better. You really can't see any knotting through a silk top. That'S going to be your most premium style cap that you can part in any direction, so soap top is going to get a little pricey, but you can't see any of the knotting. So if you do have a darker root, that might be something that works for you. Silk top also i've been told, is incredibly comfortable. I haven't purchased one yet, but i do tend to make that i'm planning on making that one my next wig hand tied. Let'S take a look at hand tied, so we've been looking at wefted, wigs like the alessandra here, that's wefted. This is sarah by jon renau. This is a hand-tied cap, so each individual strand of hair is hand-tied into this cap, whereas in a wefted cap like this, each individual strand of hair is tied onto a track and then the tracks or the wefts are tied into the actual cap. This is not going to have any hair come through the wig at you. This is going to be very comfortable if you don't have any hair at all, you're not going to feel this. It'S incredibly soft, not scratchy at all. This is an all-day wear. Super comfy wig um. We were talking about velvet ear tabs. This has a velvet ear tab! That'S going to go right up against here. So if you have sensitive skin, the velvet is really great for that. It also has an extended velvet nape that sits right down here again super comfy and allows for a little bit more security. There has the adjustable straps. These are velcro to fit your head and then these caps do have quite a bit of stretch with them as well. I want to talk about the difference between lace front a little bit and non-lace front. So my tatum here, as you can see, does not have any lace in the front. She has a bang, so she doesn't need it. If the bang wasn't there, you would just see a straight line where the wig ends and your skin begins, whereas with a lace front here it becomes a gradual line and creates an actual hairline for you. So if you don't have any hair to incorporate in the front lace front is definitely the way you want to go with this that i'm wearing here. This topper has a lace front as well and, as you can see, there is a a good, a decent lace front here. You wouldn't be able to see it unless you're really really really close to my face, and it does a great job of mimicking. The hairline um colors we're going to get more into colors later and what those mean, but the the biggest thing whenever you're looking for a color, is you want to make sure that you're looking at the base color first, every wig is going to have a base. Color, like this tatum here, has this darker uh more chestnut brown colored uh base. Then she has highlights my biggest word of advice for color. Look at the swatches online see what you like, but then look them up on youtube and see how it actually moves on the wig with your particular wig you're. Looking at the colors can look different between a straight wig and a curly wig because of the highlighting. So please make sure you are looking at a straight wig if you're purchasing straight or curly. If you're purchasing curly some pixie cuts, don't you won't get to see the full color if you're planning on getting a longer wig and you're? Looking at the color on a pixie cut, so try to get one that matches as close to the length and the texture of the hair that you are planning on purchasing. Just to make sure you get a good idea of what the color is. But we'll go into more of the color in another video. This is more about cap construction, so guys, if you enjoyed this uh, please subscribe to my channel. Please share this so that if you have any friends, um or just anybody in your life that might be struggling with hair loss, you might not even know yet um just share the video and subscribe to it. So you can be alerted when i put up another one later this week, we'll start going into more basics about wigs and we'll start taking some off and putting some on and look at the difference between them so stay tuned. For that again, i want to thank you for all of your questions. Thank you for tuning in you have a great day, bye, guys