Yes, I know the color on the sides doesn't quite match the top -- my hair was cut very short on the sides, and I didn't have a chance to re-dye my hair on the sides before taking the photos. I think that it turned out pretty well, though.
My stylist put a rock-hard gel in my hair. It makes it look pretty funky, but I'm not quite sure I like drawing quite that much attention to my hair. But you can tell me. It's also slightly too poofy on the top, but this is the first day I was wearing the unit.
One issue with the rock hard gel, is that it makes the shine difference between my toplace hair and my real hair even more apparent. Though perhaps on-lookers would attribute that merely to the gel.
- Darius
This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 8, 2008 12:52 AM This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 8, 2008 12:29 AM
What's wrong with the sides? Too short? I like it short on the sides, though it does make it harder to blend. It grows in pretty quick, though, so just wait a week. If I get it cut longer on the sides, then I just have to go for a haircut more often, since I don't like long hair on the sides.
But any chance of seeing a pic from the top, and front hairline as well.
There are a bunch more pictures if you click on the "here" link in the original post.
Regarding the crown, you can order units without a crown. I end up with a crown-like area anyway due to the haircut. (The hair is cut shorter at the top of my head, and also has to be combed away in all directions from that area.) Then I just have to be careful while styling, to get "lift" into the hairs at the "crown" in order to have it look natural.
I looked at all the pics and it looks good to me. The blending might need a little work or that may just be the way it looks in pictures which we all know don't do it justice.
Overall, good job !
I don't think your sides look bad at all, but they are thinner than the piece so you could go with a slightly lower density on the piece next time....but this really looks good. I think its a job well done!
DebbieS.
I'm not sure it's as bad as people are saying. Where exactly is the line between your own hair and the piece? I think people are assuming the thicker / darker hair is entirely the piece and I don't know if that's true or not.
Where exactly is the line between your own hair and the piece? I think people are assuming the thicker / darker hair is entirely the piece and I don't know if that's true or not.
You may be right. Enclosed is a marked up version of the first photo. The red star shows where my real hair ends and the unit begins. The blue star shows how far the longest tendrils of the unit hair drape down. Any other lack of blending that anyone might notice is just how my hair has always looked when cut this short. One may not like this look, but every girlfriend I've ever had has always said that they prefer it when my hair is cut this short on the sides, so I tend to defer to their judgment.
I'm also including a photo of the back of my head. The hair on the back of my head is of the same density as the hair on the sides -- it's just not cut nearly as short, except for way down near my neck. I think that one can plainly see from that that the unit hair is not all denser than my natural hair.
On this back photo, my real hair starts three inches back from the center of the "crown", which is near the top of my head. If you look very carefully, you can see some tendrils of unit hair hanging down past this, but everything below the bottom of the tendrils is 100% my own hair, and of the same "density" as my side hair, just longer.
It's the rock hard gel that causes this tendrily look. I can style it differently, but then there are different tells, like a shinyness difference. An advantage of the gels is that I can apply them to my side and back hair too, and then everything is shiny. Someone else mentioned that Paul Mitchell sells a Tea Tree styling foam that gives hair a matte finish, so if I can find some (I might have to resort to mail-order), I can try it instead to dull my non-real hair rather than shinying up my real hair.
- Darius
P.S. If I get around to it, I'll take a couple more photos in a week when my side hair has grown out a bit. Also, I've since re-dyed by side and back hair, so there are no longer grey roots exposed by the haircut.
Thanks for the comments all. I'm not sure I'm convinced that I need Dermatch on the sides or less density on top. My hair here is cut extremely short on the sides. Near the bottom of the sides, it is cut perhaps as short as a quarter inch, and then it tapers longer the farther up the side of my head you go.
The hair on the sides is actually of significantly higher density than the density of the unit -- it's just much, much shorter. I know that this is perhaps not conventional to do while wearing (The Coolpiece FAQ, for instance says not to do it), but then again, people probably don't expect such a hair style from someone wearing a rug, so perhaps that works to my advantage.
Back when I had a full head of hair on the top, you could see my scalp on sides like this, when it was cut this short. I'm not afraid to show scalp on the side when the hair is cut this short. (My stylist at the time would say that when cutting hair this short on the side, she had to be careful not to make people look bald on the sides, even though she loved the style.)
Having hair this short does make blending harder, but the biggest problem I have with blending at the moment, is that my own hair is very course and dull and wirey, while the Asian hair is finer and shinier and soft. This is not a bad thing, it's just not like my natural hair.
Another issue is with using the rock hard gel. It makes strands of hair clump together, which gives kind of a cool funky look, but also causes the hairs from the unit--the ones that are staggered to hang down the sides to prevent any straight demarcation lines from being apparent--it causes those hairs to clump together too, differently than the natural hairs on the sides. But from looking in the mirror, it seemed to me to look more like just part of the funky tussled spiky look.
To make these issues go away, I could have my hair cut longer on the sides, but then a week or two after the hair cut, I end up with the converse problem. My hair on the sides looks too thick and bristly and puffed up around the edge of the "horseshoe". My natural hair, what's left of it anyway, still grows very quickly.
- Darius
This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 9, 2008 10:00 AM
To be honest I aint bothered about styles, What everyone has to realise is that a hairpiece DOES have limitations, My advice is to go with a style to give you nice looking hair but with the minimum of fuss and with the minimum of hassle, It makes hairwearing so much easier and stress free, The way it should be.
My advice is to go with a style to give you nice looking hair but with the minimum of fuss and with the minimum of hassle, It makes hairwearing so much easier and stress free, The way it should be.
Fortunately, the hairpiece hair (other than attaching and detaching and the like) doesn't actually cause me any more headaches than my real hair ever did. My real hair was always pretty cranky in one way or another!
-Darius
P.S. See above a few posts, if interested, for a newly posted marked-up photo.
This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 9, 2008 10:48 PM This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 9, 2008 10:47 PM This message has been edited by Darius99 on Jul 9, 2008 10:46 PM
It's SFS, 75% density, freestyle. It was originally ordered as color #2, but then it was re-dyed to be between 1 and 1B. I dye my hair on the sides to match with black hair dye. (My real hair color is what would be called "soft black", but unfortunately, I don't think that there is any hair dye of this color, nor can one order a unit in "soft black". It's kind of moot anyway, as my real hair now has a lot of grey in it, so I dye it anyway.)
I believe that the unit has no crown.
I also have about an inch of my own thin wispy hair in front of the unit, which is why it looks at the very front like there are some hairs actually growing out of my head -- there are! This would be harder to pull off if combing back, however, since the transition between the real hair and the unit hair is not a continuous gradient.
The unit is attached with glue at the perimeter, and styled with "Biosilk Rock Hard Gelee". I haven't quite gotten the hang of using this gel myself (maybe I'll get it right tomorrow), but I can get a similar effect using Nexxus gel followed by Nexxus hair spray.
The technique is to rub a big dollop of gel all over one's fingers while the hair is still damp, and then rub the gel from the fingers all through the hair. Then to muss the hair back and forth with the fingers to bring out the layers, and then to use a brush and/or comb to blend the sides before it hardens up, and to use one's fingers to adjust the hairs a bit until it looks right and to spike the hair in front. I also then use the tail of a rat tail comb to do some fine adjustments of moving hairs around to make sure there isn't one big bald spot, while another spot has too much hair.
The Rock Hard Gelee is pretty interesting, however, when done the way my stylist did. It made it so my hair was kind of like rubber, so that would hold it's shape perfectly, but if pushed on, it wasn't crunchy. (The Nexxus gel alone does not hold nearly as strongly. Followed by hairspray it does, but then it ends up crunchy instead of rubbery.) The Biosilk gel made the hair more pliable than crunchy, but then would bounce right back to the original shape anyway if pressed on. When I woke up in the morning, it also bounced right back to its shape, even after having been slept on all night. (Maybe I should be aiming for a week-long styling, in addition to a week-long attachment!)
