I wore a hair topper nearly every day I left the house for about five years. I have eight of them in a drawer right now, sizes from 5.5x5.5 up to 9x9, which tells you roughly how long it took me to work out what I was doing.
The part I didn't work out until years in: a topper is brilliant on top, and underneath it's a lid. Warm, dark, and sat on a scalp that already had opinions.
I have seborrheic dermatitis. If you don't know the term, it's the flaky, itchy, sometimes weepy thing that shows up where your skin makes the most oil, and the scalp is its favourite address. It's driven by a yeast called Malassezia that lives on everyone. Some of us just react to it.
So put a topper on that. Clips pulling on the same four spots every day, hair you can't get a comb through to the skin, and product sat in there because rinsing it all out takes time and you're already late.
Three things changed it for me.
The first was washing my own scalp more, not less. I'd been washing less because I was scared of shedding. Wrong instinct. The oil is the food source. Less washing meant more flaking, which meant more scratching, which meant more shedding anyway.
The second was moving the clips. Not once, not to a “better” spot, but around. Different anchor points on different days. The bald patches I was quietly getting at the front were traction, and traction is just the same small pull repeating for years until the follicle gives up.
Then the boring one, which did more than either of the others. Take the thing off at home. I wore mine indoors for ages because I didn't want to see myself without it, and that is a real feeling, I'm not dismissing it. But a scalp that gets eight hours of air a day is a different scalp.
I shaved my head in July, so I'm not wearing any of them at the moment. Odd position to write from, though it does mean I can be honest about the bits I got wrong, because there's no piece I'm currently defending.
What I'd say to anyone starting out: buy smaller than you think for your first one. A 5.5x5.5 sits lighter, needs fewer clips, and if you hate wearing it you've lost less money. You can size up once you know whether this is for you.
And go and see a GP or a dermatologist about the scalp separately. A topper isn't the cause of seb derm and taking it off won't cure it. I spent an embarassing amount of time treating the wrong problem.
I've written the long version of all this, with the products I used and the ones that made it worse, over on my blog.
Wearing a Hair Topper With Seborrheic Dermatitis: What Actually Works
Neveen Wood writes The Neveen Edit, a UK beauty and hair loss blog covering wigs, toppers, scalp conditions and skincare.
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