00:00A Shade El Macher is a person who washes, styles, sells, basically everything wig-related for Orthodox Jewish women.
00:10And if you love the way you look in your wig, that's going to make you want to cover your
00:14hair even more.
00:19Hey, my name is Tali, and I'm a wig stylist for Orthodox Jewish women.
00:23In Judaism, a woman covers her hair because once she marries, her hair becomes private for her husband.
00:30Now, modesty in Judaism is referred to as privacy.
00:34The special things in our life, we like to keep private.
00:38And our hair, being that it makes up so much of who we are as women, that is something special
00:44that we are setting aside for our husbands.
00:47Before I got married, I actually really anticipated wearing a wig.
00:50Like, you know, my hair was frizzy, and I'm like, how awesome would it be to wake up every day
00:55and have a good hair day?
00:57I was really struggling with how to make them look right, more like me.
01:01I felt very lost, and I didn't feel myself.
01:03I just had moved to LA, and I was looking for something to keep me busy.
01:07My husband suggested, why don't you start washing and styling wigs?
01:11And so I did.
01:12And from there, I started experimenting with color.
01:15And from color, I started selling wigs, and it kind of just took off from there.
01:23The name of my brand is TNT Wigs.
01:26We are a full-service salon.
01:28We offer wig purchases, wig repairs, color, cuts.
01:32We basically do it all.
01:35Because this is such a personal journey, so many women can keep this mitzvah in so many different ways.
01:41There's women who wear scarves.
01:42There's women that will wear wigs and not show any hair.
01:45Some women will take out a little bit of hair.
01:47My job is to meet you wherever you're at.
01:50It's important for women to feel beautiful and confident in their wigs,
01:53because that's one of the only ways that they're going to want to continue doing this mitzvah.
01:58And nowhere in the Torah does it say that a woman can't look beautiful.
02:02We're supposed to be beautiful.
02:03In terms of covering your hair, it's not about if they know if it's a wig or not.
02:08The only important factor here is that you know you are covering your hair.
02:13These are all 100% human hair wigs.
02:15We have multiple suppliers in China where we get our wigs from.
02:18And you can basically do anything you want to these wigs.
02:21Anything you would do to regular hair.
02:23Here we have a silk top wig where there's an actual scalp already built into the wig.
02:29They're very durable, not as delicate as the lace top wigs.
02:33This is a lace top wig.
02:35It is an ear to ear lace.
02:37And what we did in here was we added her a strip of velvet in order to keep this wig
02:42on her head.
02:43Because if you compare it to the silk, the silk has a front comb, whereas the lace does not.
02:48So if you take a look at the scalp, there's different things that we can do to make the lace
02:53look even more realistic.
02:55I always do like suggesting that my clients line their lace.
02:58But we do have different colors and fabrics of lining that you can choose from.
03:03And then I do like to match up the lining based off their skin tone.
03:08Here we have a bandful.
03:10It is meant to be worn with headbands, caps, haps.
03:15Okay, so let me show you what a bandful looks like.
03:17So the headband is meant to cover that front seam.
03:19We wanted to wear it like a turban.
03:21We could wear it like that.
03:22A lot of my clients that work in like hospitals, teachers,
03:26they usually gravitate towards the bandful because it's just easier.
03:29They don't have hair in their face.
03:30A wig in this salon ranges anywhere from I would say 800 to like 3,000 based off length.
03:37And sometimes based off color.
03:38A wig should last.
03:40I would say if you take care of it, I would give it a good five years.
03:43What does it mean that a wig is kosher?
03:45Years ago, it was said women were giving their hair up for idol worship and that that hair was being
03:51used to make wigs.
03:53In Judaism, we are not allowed to use anything that was once used for idol worship.
04:00These are kosher wigs that have not been used for idol worship.
04:03So today we're going to be seeing Hanna.
04:06She is a long time client of mine and she actually has a few pieces from our line.
04:13She's going to be coming in today for a new wig consult and we're going to walk you through it.
04:19Hi.
04:20What's up?
04:21How are you?
04:23I'm good.
04:23Show me what you got.
04:24I just happen to love a natural wig.
04:27I'm surrounded by all sorts of people and I don't necessarily want it to be like, oh, she's wearing a
04:33wig.
04:33I do want it to look very natural.
04:35Not that I would be embarrassed by it at all.
04:37I love that I cover my hair and I have so much fun with it.
04:40But for me, it does need to look natural.
04:42There's definitely community.
04:43We'll all come to the salon.
04:45We love, love to try on wigs together.
04:47We'll talk about it.
04:48You don't feel like you're necessarily alone and you guys just give each other ideas and really have fun with
04:53it.
04:53It becomes something instead of like, oh, we have to do this.
04:56It becomes like, oh my gosh, how cool.
04:57We can do this.
04:58We haven't taken out hair from this yet.
05:00No, we haven't.
05:01But it's so glam.
05:02Maybe we'll just take out hair from the sides.
05:05And leave the back.
05:06Exactly.
05:06So that you have your fullness in the back.
05:08But from the sides, we could take out wefts just so that because not many people have a ton of
05:13hair around their face.
05:14It's fuller and I like also that it's a little longer than what I normally wear.
05:18Once I do all of that here, we'll send it for color.
05:21Once we get it back from color, we'll cut the lace.
05:24Because that has to be the last.
05:26Because she's going to, you know, she's going to work on the wig.
05:28And we don't want to stretch out the lace.
05:30So last, last thing we'll do is cut the lace.
05:32We'll really get to work on it and we'll finish up the rest.
05:36This is a lace top wig that is wefted.
05:40A weft is a row of hair.
05:41A row of hair that we can sew into a wig.
05:44And they kind of go all the way around, sewn in by rows.
05:48Hannah came in.
05:49She wanted some work done to a few of her wigs.
05:51So this wig, we are removing some wefts from the sides so that she can still have fullness,
05:58but just not so much fullness around her face.
06:01And I'm going to stop at the seam right in the center, right in the middle of the back of
06:05the wig.
06:06I'm going to show you.
06:10And here you see the weft starts to come undone.
06:15And I'm just going to tack it down where I cut so that the weft doesn't continue to unravel.
06:28Okay.
06:30And that's basically how it'll look all the way down.
06:34And essentially make it less heavy around her face.
06:38Once we get all the work done in-house, that it needs to go for color to the colorist.
06:42And so we'd probably have a finished product in about two to three weeks.
06:48This mitzvah, I really hold it dear to me.
06:51And I really believe in it.
06:52I think that, you know, in your marriage when you have a few things that are really private,
06:56and that's something that's just for you and your husband,
06:58I think that that really creates a stronger bond.
07:02It's such a shock sometimes for people to see religious people that are also, you know, somebody fashionable.
07:07And so I think it's important for people to realize just like that there's so much more to people than
07:13what meets the eye.
07:14Wigs are so popular right now that everybody wants in on it.
07:18It's really a place for you to kind of let loose.
07:21Once you let loose and you're cool with the idea that,
07:24hey, I'm covering my hair, might as well have fun with it, anything can happen.
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