Alopecia doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice your looks

Tracy Potter stared in the mirror and Dolly Parton stared back. “I was 13 and had gone to Lewis’s with my mum to try on wigs to cover my bald patches. The choice was very different back then and I remember I had a big curly affair plonked on my head.

“It looked awful.”

Of course wigs and hair-pieces have improved no end since that day more than 30 years ago – as 47-year-old Tracy knows all too well.

She has just opened the Hair Fairy Wigs shop in Gateacre, using her own experience of hair loss over the past 30-plus years to offer an individual service for other women in her situation.

Stocking wigs priced from £60 up to £6,000 as well as hair pieces and scarves, there are also specialists on hand to advise women who have experienced hair loss through alopecia, chemotherapy or illness on make-up techniques.

Tracy herself has just undergone a course in cutting techniques so she can style a wig to suit the individual.

“It’s all about giving women their confidence back. Self image is so important and when you lose your hair you can lose your identity.

“I’ve been there, seen it, done it and got the T-shirt and if I can help then I will.”

Tracy, who has a 25-year-old daughter and who lives in Hunts Cross, first noticed her own hair loss when she was a child.

“My sister saw it when she was drying my hair one day, a patch about the size of a 10p piece. Later, I’d have one or two patches or sometimes four or five or sometimes they’d all join up together.”

She is at a loss to explain what triggered it.

“I was knocked down when I was nine and hair loss can be prompted by stress but whether that’s what happened with me I don’t know.

“I was extremely lucky to be surrounded by a very supportive family and friends, and because my hair was long and thick and the patches were underneath, I was able to put it back in a pony tail and cover it up.”

Over the following years Tracy’s hair grew and was lost over and over again. She lost it all for the first time when she was 23 and again a couple of years ago when she also lost her eyelashes and eyebrows. She now wears a wig full time.

Nevertheless Tracy has undergone a range of treatments to try to restore her blonde locks.

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