A few weeks ago, a judge ruled in a landmark case that severe female hair loss can be classified as a ‘disability’, meaning that specialised wigs or hair systems can now be VAT-exempt.
Personally, as someone who has suffered all my life from androgenic hair loss, I wouldn’t describe myself as disabled. After all, it doesn’t impact my ability to do my job or live my day-to-day life.
But it is true that the psychological effects of hair loss can be devastating, especially if it starts early, as mine did.
It defined my sense of self as a young woman, destroying my confidence and rendering me permanently insecure about my appearance. For decades, I did everything I could to hide it.
Back when my hair first started shedding, had someone told me that one day I would end up not only wearing a wig, but making no secret of the fact, I would have been horrified.
Like many people, I thought wigs were embarrassing and very possibly unhygienic, and the people who wore them rather sad and pathetic. I associated them with vain old women and toupee-wearing creeps, dead French aristocrats and Roald Dahl’s witches.
So what has changed? Well, I’m currently undergoing a lengthy and fairly gruelling treatment which involves a cocktail of drugs and some very painful injections all over my scalp – in the hope that my own hair will sprout some new growth.
Medicine has moved on considerably since I was first diagnosed and there are a number of new protocols which have seen very promising results.
Sarah Vine has suffered from androgenic hair loss all her life, and while she wants to de-stigmatise this condition, she’s not quite ready to face the world on a day-to-day basis without the security blanket of a wig
But the two to three-year treatment requires my dermatologist, Dr Ophelia Veraitch, to be able to access my scalp – which means I can’t wear my old integrated hair system, since in her opinion it could potentially damage new growth.
I have been very open about my hair loss, even appearing (slightly madly) in front of the entire nation on ITV’s This Morning without my wig at the end of last year.
I really want to de-stigmatise this condition and if talking about it helps, great. But for all my bravado, I’m not quite ready to face the world on a day-to-day basis without the security blanket of a wig.
When I’m at home or just pottering about, I don’t bother with it. But I would be lying if I said I yet had the confidence to throw it off completely. If I’m at work or going out, I like to wear my wig, in the same way I like to wear make-up to cover up the bags under my eyes and dress in clothes that hide my muffin top. My wig is really just an extension of all that. It gives me confidence, and it’s a type of armour.
I’ve also found that whenever I do go out with my own hair – which I did quite a lot at the end of last year after finally revealing I’d been hiding my hair loss for 15 years – people treat me differently, and I don’t always want that.
You see, it’s as much about what’s on my head, as it is about what’s in my head.
When at the age of 43 my hair became too thin to camouflage with a clever haircut and thickening products, I was still happily married to my now ex, Michael Gove. Of course, he was fully aware of my hair loss – and incredibly sympathetic and supportive about it. To be honest, I don’t think it ever bothered him one bit – but of course it bothered me.
It was after the birth of my son William that it got really bad – and I did try a wig, but I couldn’t get on with it. I just felt odd about the idea of taking my hair off at night, as though it would strip me of an allure I might still have as a woman.
It’s hard enough to keep the romance alive in a marriage when you’ve got young children and busy lives; I just felt that if there was a wig sitting by the bedside like some small, slightly irksome marsupial, that would be the absolute end of it.
The great thing about the integrated hair system was that it remained attached to my head the whole time. I could sleep in it, shower in it, go to the gym in it. I could kid myself (and others) that this was actually my hair.
The key with any wig, Sarah has learnt, is clever styling. This one is a flintier shade of bronde (a colour that combines brown and blonde tones to create a natural-looking sun-kissed effect)
It also meant I could play sport and do other things without the worry of it flying off and embarrassing me.
A lot of women feel this way, which is why these sorts of systems are so popular. They require a lot of maintenance and can sometimes be problematic if not looked after properly, but I have to say I loved the way mine, from specialist Lucinda Ellery in London, made me feel and look.
The confidence it gave me was life-changing and I don’t say that lightly. I had become very self-conscious about my growing bald patches after a friend – or perhaps I should say ‘friend’ – shared a picture of me at another pal’s birthday party which clearly showed the extent of my hair loss. It was part of a photo album of the event that she had sent to everyone. I was mortified.
Having an integrated system that hid all that was incredibly liberating. Now I didn’t have to worry about being caught unawares. It was also very versatile: because of the way the integration worked, it was all but undetectable, even in high winds or rain.
Lucinda originally came up with her ‘intralace’ method as a way of helping girls and women suffering from trichotillomania, a nervous condition which causes sufferers to pull out their own hair (sometimes eyelashes and eyebrows, too). By covering the resulting bald patches with the system, clients were unable to pull at the hair, with the result that it grew back.
When I started going to her in 2012, Lucinda was one of very few people offering the system – now there are many more, not all entirely reputable and none, in my view, with her expertise.
I was loath to stop seeing Lucinda. But Dr Ophelia was adamant that if I was to undergo her lengthy and expensive hair-loss treatment, the integrated system had to come off.
After almost two decades, it was quite a wrench, I tell you. Initially, I tried using the existing hairpiece with clips instead of fixed connections – but since my own hair is so thin and so fine, they just didn’t hold. So I decided to take the plunge and go the full syrup.
Sarah in a chocolate-brown wig made from human hair, which makes it an expensive purchase at around £1,400
I did some research, rang around a few places and, eventually, settled on Raoul Wigmakers, based in Paddington, west London. I liked it because the company is quite old school (it was founded in 1899), its staff are kind and very patient – and there’s an on-site workshop where the firm make and mend the wigs. Also, their prices are reasonable compared to other more glamorous outfits.
That’s when the fun really started. Trying on wigs is like trying on endless different versions of yourself. Each one is a new you: blonde, brunette, straight, curly: so many possibilities, so much potential.
At my age – 58 – and single for a long time, it felt liberating to experiment, however fleetingly, with these new personas.
It was a chance to reinvent myself: no longer the failed wife and 50-something singleton, but someone else, someone new, someone who might reshape the future on their terms.
Suddenly, I could be anyone I wanted to be simply by switching my hair and it felt exciting.
For me, that’s the main difference between a wig and an integrated system. The latter is more of a camouflage, a disguise; the former can be – if you want it to be – a full-on fashion statement. Just as long as you don’t mind people knowing. I currently have three wigs on the go (four if you count the joke one I got from Amazon for Halloween).
A sassy 1960s-style, behind-the-ears synthetic wig, which is as light as a feather and costs £380
Two are human hair: one from Raoul (a lovely chocolate brown); the other from Lucinda Ellery in a flintier shade of bronde. The third is a bit of a curveball: a synthetic wig that I picked up from Raoul after I popped in to try on some shorter styles.
My intention was to find something that would be more similar to my own hair as it grows (which, miraculously, it seems to be doing, albeit still very patchy and thin in parts). I was thinking a short pixie cut – but none were quite right.
Then Raoul whipped out a sort of sassy 1960s-style behind-the-ears bob – in blonde, no less, and for some reason it just worked.
After years of sporting a longer style – partly by necessity, as the integrated system works much better long – I felt more like my old self. Or like the old self I would have been if my hair hadn’t all fallen out.
Being synthetic, it’s also light as a feather, and considerable lighter on my wallet, too (a full human hair wig costs around £1,400; my synthetic one was £380). At Raoul, it was explained that shorter styles work better in synthetic, as they keep their shape more easily.
They are also practically indestructible, as I discovered when I went home one night, took it off, left it by the sofa while I went upstairs to change – then came down to discover the dog had mistaken it for a squirrel.
Hilariously, it doesn’t get washed with shampoo but fabric conditioner, and if it needs
perking up, I just get my clothes steamer out. Either that, or I just drop it off at Raoul, like an item of dry cleaning, and pick it up the next day. In some ways, it’s actually a lot less hassle than washing and styling my own hair.
The key with any wig, I’ve learnt, is clever styling. Most wigs tend to arrive looking almost too good to be true – unlike real hair, which is temperamental. Nothing says ‘wig’ more than perfect tresses. If it’s a more natural appearance you’re after, you want the wig to look undone.
One of my great good fortunes is that I happen to be friends with a truly great hairdresser: George Northwood. Most of the time he’s jetting around the world tending to Hollywood A-listers, or creating looks for various fashion weeks, or trimming Claudia Winkleman’s iconic fringe; but since I’ve known him for donkey’s years and he’s been very involved in my ‘hair journey’, he still takes my call.
George was the guy who cut my own hair in the latter stages of its life, creating a sharp pixie cut that skilfully hid the balding patches. When I switched to the integrated system, he would often ‘de-wig’ it for me.
Now that I was transitioning to an actual wig, there was only one man for the job. I liked the short one so much that I decided to take the plunge with one of the longer ones, too.
The result: the kind of choppy, undone bob I’ve always dreamt of. Now, when I catch sight of myself in a shop window, I don’t see a frumpy, middle-aged, well-past-her-sell-by-date old bag; I see a rather sassy brunette with a cheeky bob. Call me deluded, but it makes me happy.
