Three Cosplayers on Wigs
Wigs are often considered to be the finishing piece for any cosplay in order to fully identify a character. There are different ways that cosplayers approach this step, some take to creating wigs out of paper and hijabi cosplayers style their hijabs in ways that mimic the character they’re cosplaying.
Some cosplayers nix wigs all together and use their natural hair for their cosplays, either in their current hair color or after using hair dyes. Wigs are optional accessories that can complete a cosplay, but they aren’t mandatory pieces.
Three cosplayers of varying levels explained what they look for when it comes to picking and buying wigs for their cosplays and photoshoots. What they all agreed on, without fail, is that this can be an expensive hobby, even when it comes to routinely buying wigs on the lower end of the price scale.
Tori Miller of @thewanderingtori (and @thewanderingcosplays) breaks down what she looks for in a cosplay wig into two points. What she mainly focuses on is price point and for the wig “to look like whatever cosplay I’m trying to do.” The range that she tends to focus on are wigs between $15 and $30, not super cheap but also not “breaking the bank.”
This is a decent price range for wigs bought off of Amazon or other wholesalers, especially when human hair wigs can run upwards of $150 and custom wigs cost even more. And, for a cosplay who does minimal styling, it’s a comfortable range for looking for wigs that are generally comparable to the planned cosplay. Tori doesn’t look for exact copies of a wig since “exacts are [often] expensive.”
What she does focus on, rather than finding an exact copy for her cosplay, is something of similar color and length. From that point on, things are manageable. But, she does add on to never buy anything under $16 since they are rarely, if ever, of good quality. And to not “buy something too soon that you don’t like”, there’s always another wig and another option out there. All it takes is thinking outside of the box.
“If you aren’t happy with what you find, keep looking. Don’t buy something too soon that you don’t like.”
Another thing to keep in mind, warns Tori, is shipping dates and for when the wig is needed. Depending on the amount of work that needs to be put into the wig and shipping times, it may be wiser to settle for a less accurate wig in order to have it on hand. “I’d rather go with the sooner rather than later,” explains Tori when talking about planning cosplays for events. It’s better to have the cosplay finished on time, rather than to be left without.
Price point is something that cosplayer and teaching artist Christine Petrick considers on the rare occasion that they buy a wig for their cosplays or one of their photoshoots. The main reason that the focus on price point (and overall quality of the wig itself), is because they “prefer to use it more than once for pieces or cosplays” due to the prices of wigs in general. Since the points that they pay attention to are versatility and quality, they often look towards heat safe synthetic wigs.
Heat safe synthetic wigs allow for styling using heat tools (blow dryers, straighteners, curlers) without damaging the wig. A synthetic wig that isn’t heat safe will ultimately be damaged (and the strands can melt) and will have to be tossed aside. Not all synthetic wigs are heat safe or heat resistant, they have different “safe” temperatures and have to be, as a whole, treated differently than human hair.
Buying wigs with enough time to style and “troubleshoot”, as Christine explains, helps to get the wigs prepped for photoshoots and events. Wigs don’t always cooperate on the first try and there could be issues with the way it’s been styled. “Certain parts don’t curl properly, stand or overall style the right way,” Christine adds. Wig styling is, after all, an art and not an exact science.
Quality is, perhaps, the single most important factor to take note of when buying a wig. An expensive wig doesn’t necessarily mean a high quality wig and an inexpensive wig doesn’t mean it’ll be of low quality. It all depends on the manufacturer and, once again, the quality of the base materials.
KK, a cosplayer who goes by @HeadlessHeart, explains that they also focus on quality and price when they look for a wig. When it comes to quality, it’s so that they can work with “something beyond what you’d find at the dollar store around Halloween.” A wig doesn’t need to be high quality or costing in the hundreds, so long as it’s something of decent quality that can be easy to work with. Something that is important to keep in mind is that whatever the price range, the wig needs to be thick enough to style and wear without looking “like the wig is balding.”
“Putting in the hard work for any project tends to make you feel closer to it.”
Wig thickness is an important factor when it comes to both wearing the wig out of the bag with minimal styling or styling it fully. For the latter, there’s always the option of sewing in or gluing additional wefts in order to thicken the wig. But, that does drive up the price of the total wig as hair wefts can run anywhere from $10 to upwards of $200. Adding wefts in also ups the amount of time that needs to be put into styling a wig (color matching and cutting the wefts to match the base wig).
That isn’t to say that thinner wigs aren’t without their uses, as KK goes on to explain. These types of wigs are usable and are “fine if you’re just doing selfies or whatever”, but goes on to add that they can ruin an “otherwise good cosplay” if the thinness of the wig isn’t camouflaged.
Clever styling, and the use of accessories such as hats or headbands, can be used to disguise the shedding or thinness of a cheaper wig. There’s also the option of layering wigs to quickly and easily create the illusion of thickness and a styled wig.
“The problem with buying relatively cheap wigs off of Amazon, as I tend to do,” explains KK, “is that you’ll never find an exact match for what you’re trying to do.” This is something that at one point used to stress KK out when it came to styling wigs for cosplays, until KK came to the realization that it allowed for greater freedom. Once the focus shifted from finding that exact replica, it opened up a whole new ballpark for KK.
Moving away from that mindset allowed KK far more creative control as to how they were representing and embodying the character they had chosen to cosplay. “Honestly, it gives me more of a chance to make the character my own and work on styling instead of having the wig as-is.”
KK’s words sum up the point of wigs, and cosplaying as a whole. It’s to make the character your own, no matter the process in which you choose to go about it. Either by commissioning a custom wig, creating one out of paper or using a hijab in place of a wig, the point of it is to make the character your own and to enjoy yourself in the cosplay.
