When a sheitel has you second-guessing your life choices, here’s your supportive group therapy 

Confession: We’ve all had that one wig that was a total lemon. When a sheitel has you second-guessing your life choices, here’s your supportive group therapy — with practical tips on how to move forward

Miri still remembers the time her friend Aliza asked her to join her on a trip to Tiffany, the iconic jewelry store on New York’s Fifth Avenue. Aliza had spent thousands of dollars on a Tiffany bracelet, and the clasp kept getting jammed. “Come with me to Manhattan,” she begged Miri. “We’ll bring in my bracelet to be fixed, and we’ll make it a full-day trip.”

“There’s so much I could have remembered about that day — Manhattan is such a colorful place,” Miri says. “But the only thing I remember is the amazingly deferential and respectful treatment Aliza got from the staff at Tiffany. They literally waited on her hand and foot.”

Why did that encounter make such a deep impression on Miri? “Simple. Because I had also made a thousand-dollar purchase a few months earlier, and just like Aliza’s bracelet, it kept malfunctioning. But in my case, when I went back to the seller, she flat out refused to take responsibility. Instead, she blamed me.”

Miri’s purchase wasn’t a piece of jewelry. It was a new wig.

And while there are many wonderful wig sellers and producers who take full responsibility for wigs that don’t deliver on their promises, too many horror stories keep emerging from what is essentially an unregulated industry replete with high prices, high risks, and an often-erratic service ethic.

Tress Code

It’s a part of frum life that many women dread — a process that drains our physical, emotional, and financial reserves. Chaya is that rare woman who actually enjoys the hunt for a new sheitel; she’s honed the process down to a science.

“Choosing the hair, deciding on the style, making multiple visits to the seller and stylist — I know some women find it stressful, but I truly enjoy it.

“But,” she says, “I once purchased a sheitel where the hair was so staticky, I looked like I’d been electrocuted every time I put it on. I was annoyed, obviously, but I also felt very discouraged. I had done everything right, my research, the try-ons, the tweaks. So much had gone into this piece, and it was now unwearable.”

This wig contained multiple strands that had obviously been sourced from someone with extremely staticky hair. Chaya explained this right away to the seller, who ran through the usual “maybe it’s just your coat causing static.” But clearly, that wasn’t the issue. There was something obviously wrong with the hair — and nothing Chaya could do.

“There I was, with a brand-new, pricey sheitel that was unwearable. After all that money and time — the research, the trips back and forth to the wig stylist, the cut and tweaks and coloring — I was back where I’d been months before: needing a new wig, ASAP. Just this time, I had a lot less money to work with. All the joy had gone out of the hunt.”

Chaya’s story isn’t an outlier. Almost every frum woman knows that buying a wig comes with a significant measure of risk: emotional, logistical, and financial. Like a large appliance, it’s a significant purchase that often requires months of saving. But unlike that appliance, it’s a lot more personal — it sits atop the face and plays a major role in our appearance and self-perception. And a new wig comes with scant guarantee of satisfaction. In an industry where so much is subjective, the onus is usually on the buyer to make the case for a repair or return in case of flaws or malfunction.

Purchasing a wig isn’t an impulse or splurge buy, a “hey, it looked cute” kind of thing. It’s a long process involving multiple trips to the seller and lots of considerations and decisions. Aside from the research that goes into what style, hair, highlighting, and length a buyer might want, just the price tag alone sets a sheitel purchase into a separate class, ranging from a starting price of over $1,000, averaging at $3K, and running up to ten grand.

So when there’s an issue with a new wig, it can spell a very significant loss — of time, effort, and lots of money.

Why is it that such an expensive purchase carries a potentially devastating margin of error? More consequentially — if someone in fact buys a “lemon” of a wig, who holds the ultimate responsibility, and what, if any, compensation can the buyer expect? It’s a knotty topic, so let’s brush through (yes, a little hair pun).