More than 50 percent of women will experience noticeable hair loss in their lifetime—a change that can affect much more than their appearance. In this mini documentary, ELLE.com explores this staggering statistic through the stories of women who’ve been there before, including Hearst executive producer Amanda Kabbabe. After being diagnosed with a rare form of ovarian cancer at 24 years old and losing her hair to chemotherapy, Kabbabe was desperate to feel like herself again. In the process, she met Charlene Aminoff, owner of Gali’s Couture Wigs, and learned about the life-changing experience that led Aminoff to open her shop. Now, Aminoff is dedicated to providing hair coverings for anyone who needs them and has extended her services to those featured in the video and more.
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00:00 When I first opened Ghali's Couture Wigs,
00:02 I made a promise.
00:03 Nobody walks away from me or my wigs unhappy.
00:07 - The thing that scared me away from wigs the most
00:22 when I started was just like,
00:23 there's nothing worse than a bad wig.
00:25 I mean, I remember one place,
00:26 the girl was like fitting me for a wig.
00:27 She's like pulling at my head.
00:28 I was like, oh, this hurts a little bit.
00:30 She's like, well, it's gonna be uncomfortable.
00:31 You're wearing a wig.
00:32 - Yes. - Absolutely.
00:33 - The other salons that I had ventured to,
00:35 there wasn't that love, there wasn't that warmth.
00:38 There wasn't a sense of community.
00:40 - The salon owners were cold.
00:42 They seemed annoyed that I was taking up
00:45 too much of their time.
00:47 - But in our black culture,
00:48 we're so used to very short today,
00:51 add extension the next day, add extensions.
00:55 You do anything to it.
00:56 It's a fun way to express your beauty.
01:00 - And it's so crazy how much emphasis we put on hair
01:04 and the look and how you feel with a new haircut.
01:07 And if you like it, you're rocking it.
01:09 And if you don't like it,
01:10 you're hiding under a cap until your hair grows out.
01:13 - I was diagnosed with a really rare form
01:15 of ovarian cancer when I was 24.
01:18 It was a cancer that I would definitely need
01:20 to treat with chemotherapy.
01:22 And I mean, the first thing you think of
01:24 when you hear chemotherapy is,
01:26 "Oh God, is my hair gonna fall out?"
01:28 I think it was around my third week of chemo treatment.
01:31 That was when I was brushing my hair
01:32 and it was coming out in clumps.
01:35 And I just remember looking at myself in the mirror
01:37 and I didn't even recognize myself.
01:39 I decided to shave it and I took some control back that way,
01:41 but at the end of the day, it wasn't my choice.
01:44 I felt like I was losing everything.
01:48 And as soon as anyone would look at me on the street,
01:51 they would say, "Oh, well, there's something wrong with her."
01:53 (gentle music)
01:56 - The one thing that I wish I realized
02:00 when I first found out that my hair was gonna fall out
02:02 is that the shame I was feeling was not unique to me
02:07 and I wasn't by myself.
02:10 - At the beginning, it's hard.
02:11 You're trying to understand yourself,
02:13 work with everything that's happening with you at once.
02:17 My name is Natasha.
02:20 I am the wig surgeon.
02:22 Anything that needs to be done
02:23 to a wig, I do that.
02:25 As I am growing up, getting into my womanhood,
02:29 understanding who I am as a black woman
02:33 by doing my hair, my friend's hair,
02:36 add an extension, do a braid.
02:39 That leads me to Galley.
02:41 It was like a breath of fresh air.
02:43 - I got to know and learn the depth of wearing a wig.
02:48 - Once I lost my hair, I thought,
02:52 "This is it, never going to be in a relationship.
02:55 I'm going to stay home.
02:56 I'm gonna be an old spinster.
02:58 Life is over."
03:00 And I was just so heartbroken.
03:02 - In 2003, I got married and everyone goes into marriage
03:05 with all of their best hopes and intentions
03:08 and it didn't work out.
03:09 It led to a very sad, heartbreaking divorce.
03:13 And I started to have stress-induced alopecia areata.
03:18 (gentle music)
03:21 (gentle music)
03:24 I was under a tremendous amount of emotional stress,
03:29 financial stress.
03:31 I think that my body responded in rejecting my hair.
03:36 I would see myself with these bald patches
03:40 and it would hurt my heart deeply.
03:43 I was wearing bandanas and I had someone come up to me
03:47 at a meat market.
03:49 "Oh, you have cancer?
03:53 Are you on chemo?"
03:55 And I turned around, "Who's he talking to?
03:58 I don't have cancer."
04:01 And I said, "Oh, it's my bandana.
04:03 It's so obvious that I don't have hair under this."
04:06 - As women, we're told we have to be skinny
04:09 and we have to have a smooth face and be contoured.
04:12 And I think that when you have short hair,
04:14 there's no hiding behind the contour.
04:16 - Right, right. - So true.
04:18 I was in my senior year of college
04:21 and I thought it was gonna be the best year of my life.
04:24 I had beautiful, long hair.
04:27 It held curls, it held straight, it held everything.
04:30 My hair was my identity, my hair was me.
04:33 I was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma bone cancer.
04:36 When I was first admitted to Sloan Kettering,
04:38 they told me that I needed seven rounds of chemotherapy
04:41 that would get rid of all the body hair on my body.
04:45 I looked the doctor in the eyes and I said,
04:48 "I'm gonna be the one that beats the chemotherapy
04:50 and doesn't lose my hair."
04:51 I was in denial.
04:53 I remember when I did wind up losing my hair,
04:56 I didn't look in the mirror for two weeks.
04:58 I just felt like, "How am I gonna be pretty without hair?"
05:02 Every emotion was going through my head
05:04 and at that point, I was really
05:06 in the throes of survival mode.
05:08 My mom found Charlene.
05:09 I went in with my hat and I walked out with my hair.
05:13 - My husband and I, we got married in 2001
05:16 and we're Orthodox Jews, but we kind of served God our way,
05:20 which was not really the correct way.
05:22 I prayed, I kept kosher, I did all of the mitzvahs,
05:25 but the one thing that was so hard for me
05:27 was anything on the outside, the external mitzvahs.
05:29 And as an Orthodox Jew, we're expected to cover our hair
05:33 after we get married.
05:34 I wasn't doing that.
05:39 We had a bit of an outlandish lifestyle,
05:41 jet setting, yachts, fabulous, phony, obnoxious,
05:45 fake parties with all these top celebrities and CEOs.
05:50 I had had my fourth child.
05:51 Thank God now there's five.
05:52 We were vacationing in Miami Beach.
05:54 We decided we're gonna go spend the day
05:56 at the shore with the older boys.
05:58 We're gonna leave Gali, who had just turned two,
06:00 at the pool, asleep on a lounge chair with my nanny.
06:03 Finally, we get back to shore
06:06 and we're walking towards the pool of my building
06:08 and this man is screaming, "Help, 911, somebody help me!"
06:12 And we see a man standing in the middle of the pool
06:14 with his back to us and I quickly look to see
06:17 where my daughter is because I left her sound asleep
06:20 on a lounge chair with an umbrella opened over her
06:22 and I see she's not there but my housekeeper is asleep.
06:26 So I turn back to this scene, this nightmare,
06:29 and he turns around and I see he's holding the dead body
06:33 of my little girl, I'm sorry.
06:34 I was looking at my child, completely blue.
06:38 I will never, ever forget the way her nails looked.
06:41 The tips of her nails were purple.
06:42 And I'm looking at this nightmare and I'm thinking,
06:45 my life is over.
06:46 And my husband, who has been a medic for so long,
06:49 began performing CPR.
06:50 I looked around and I saw that someone had left
06:52 a blue pashmina shawl on a lounge chair
06:55 and I picked up this shawl and I raised up my right arm
06:58 and I started screaming and sobbing a promise in Hebrew
07:02 and I promised God that for the rest of my life,
07:05 I would serve him his way, no longer my terms.
07:07 I would cover my hair, I would wear a wig,
07:10 I would dress modestly, head to toe.
07:12 The moment I wrapped my hair in this blue shawl
07:15 and I started screaming my promise to God,
07:18 my husband began to scream, I found a pulse,
07:21 I got a pulse, I got a pulse.
07:23 And eight excruciating hours later,
07:27 a visit from one hospital to another
07:30 and the doctors walked into the room and they said,
07:33 you don't understand that your daughter
07:36 is a complete miracle.
07:38 And literally, the rest is history.
07:40 We founded Ghali's Couture Wigs as a thank you to God
07:44 that I had my miracle, my salvation
07:47 by getting with the program and giving up my hair,
07:50 which was what I was meant to do.
07:51 - When I actually started liking wearing wigs,
07:55 it completely changed the narrative,
07:57 like completely changed the narrative.
07:59 And I don't think you realize, maybe you do realize,
08:01 but it really made a huge difference in all of our lives.
08:05 I mean it, I really do.
08:07 - Charlene was the first person I went to for my wig.
08:09 I came in with my cap and I would not take it off.
08:13 You had like three wigs ready for me
08:16 and I was like, okay, are we ready to take it off?
08:17 And then I was like, okay.
08:20 And I was so nervous to take the cap off.
08:22 I thought there's no way she's gonna match my hair.
08:25 - When I first opened Ghali's Couture Wigs,
08:28 I made a promise, nobody walks away from me
08:31 or my wigs unhappy.
08:33 I'm doing this for a very different reason
08:35 than everyone else in the wig industry.
08:37 And as soon as somebody walks in,
08:38 I can sense that they're a little apprehensive
08:40 or ashamed or embarrassed.
08:42 I quickly showed them, I said,
08:44 I'm wearing a wig.
08:46 Every female in this room is wearing a wig.
08:48 Welcome to Ghali's Couture Wigs.
08:50 - I'd like to think of myself and my company
08:56 as the edit and undo button for wig trauma.
09:00 Because people come in almost traumatized
09:03 and they're just, they automatically think
09:06 that they're going to have a bad experience.
09:08 And I'm like, try us.
09:10 - Yeah, it's also amazing how sometimes
09:14 my client comes in and they're like either
09:18 a little embarrassed or don't wanna show their heads.
09:21 And it's so crazy how they come in
09:24 and they get very comfortable and they leave happy.
09:27 - This girl over here just finished treatment
09:29 and she came in to cut bangs into her hand-tied custom Ghali.
09:33 - And I'm obsessed with them, they look so good.
09:35 - Amanda, you look phenomenal.
09:37 When your life is up in shambles
09:39 and you have no control of anything,
09:41 what are things you can control?
09:43 - My hair, I can control what's on my head.
09:45 And my wig was on my head and I can control that.
09:48 - That's the beauty of how you can wear the wig,
09:52 like transform into whatever else and then put it back on.
09:56 Just feel free and happy with it.
09:59 - When I lost my hair, I felt so alone and isolated
10:02 and I didn't realize that wearing a wig
10:04 made me part of a community, a sisterhood.
10:07 And I'm actually quite happy to be a part of it.
10:11 (group awing)
10:13 (gentle music)
10:16 (gentle music)
10:19 (gentle music)
10:21 (gentle music)
10:24 (gentle music)
10:26 [MUSIC]