When clients of Demitri Jones, a former manager at the Cobella hair and beauty salon in Selfridges, expressed concern at wearing a wig in public for the first time, he would take off his badge and walk around the store with them to convince them that they looked natural.
“We would walk around and I’d say: ‘Look, no one is looking, no one notices, we’re just blending in with everyone around us,’” says Jones. “Katy Perry and Beyoncé wear so many different wigs, it has completely taken away any stigma associated with wearing one, but people are still worried.”
Jones, a stylist with 15 years’ experience specialising in wigs and hair extensions, has worked for celebrity clients and fashion weeks in New York, Paris, London and Milan, and has appeared on ITV’s reality show Models, Misfits and Mayhem, but he says it is his work with people with cancer and others who have hair loss that is the most rewarding.
This month, with his business partner and long-term boyfriend Marc Deacon, he launched Wigz on Wheelz, a mobile salon that specialises in hair loss. Jones travels to people’s homes or to hospitals in London and the home counties. The service caters for people with alopecia, trichotillomania – a condition in which a person feels compelled to pull out their hair – and hair thinning, and those undergoing gender reassignment.
“It is all about confidence,” says Jones. “Whether you are in a salon or a department store, if you are going through cancer treatment you are at your most vulnerable. Your hair falls out in patches. But you are surrounded by people getting blow dries and glamorous cuts.”
At Cobella, Jones worked with similar clients, but felt there was a market for a more private alternative. “We used to get hen parties and tourists coming in to look at wigs, and then you would get people who had just been through chemotherapy.”
Jones learned his trade from his mother, Lei, and her sister, Reena, both of whom were hairdressers, starting at the salon where his mum worked while he was still at school. His Aunt Reena, who died from breast cancer, wore an NHS wig, but, Jones says she hated it –”It was very poor quality.”
“There’s not a lot of help for cancer patients, in terms of where to go for hair loss,” he says, particularly when it comes to deciding whether to shave their heads. “It is a time when they have no control and the last bit of control is shaving.
“It’s not easy for anyone, no matter what age. Whether you’re seven or 70, a woman’s hair is her crowning glory, isn’t it? A young girl I went to see last week was in intensive chemotherapy. She had beautiful, thick, long brown hair. We discussed what was going to happen and whether she might want me to do it or someone in her family to do it. She was very emotional but she said: ‘I want you to do it.’ It’s a horrible thing to have to do, but I try to reassure people. I say: ‘This is not forever, this is just for now.’”
