Imagine losing your hair. For alopecia sufferers and some cancer patients it is a devastating reality, but hairdresser Sue Watson Wood hopes to make hair loss a little easier to bear.

Sue’s experience of looking after customers undergoing cancer treatments gave her the idea for a specialist wig service.

Searching for a natural-looking wig for a client put Sue in touch with the London agencies who supply her with an extensive range of lightweight, acrylic wigs from America and Paris.

While she was aware of other wig retailers and a service operating within the NHS, Sue wasn’t aware of anyone offering a personal service for clients in their own homes.

After six years of sourcing wigs through word-of-mouth recommendation for her clients, Sue recently launched her website, Parrucca – Italian for ‘wig’ – and has hundreds of wigs in 25 different colours.

She styles and personalises customers’ wigs and also demonstrates how to wash and care for them.

Seventy-five per cent of her customers have lost their hair due to cancer treatment. “Sometimes I see the clients before they start treatment so I can advise them on how to wear their hair to incorporate it into the wig,” explains Sue. “Not only can I look after it while they are losing their hair, I can incorporate it so the transition is easier.

Sue ran her own salon in Saltaire and taught hairdressing at Bradford College for more than a decade. She now works in The Salon in Ilkley.

Sue recalls that the most moving testimonial came from a customer who wrote, ‘you made it easier for me to lose my hair.’ Another spoke of the ‘decent invisibility’ wearing her wig gave her. She said it gave her confidence to go out knowing people wouldn’t know she was wearing a wig because it was so realistic. “It is massively rewarding because I know they will look fantastic in their wig. I also make them promise they will not tell anybody they are wearing a wig,” says Sue.

The 44-year-old, who comes from Haworth, says the wigs are so natural her clients have been complimented and asked who cuts their hair!

Bessie Storton says losing her hair was worse than losing her breast to breast cancer. The 59-year-old from Oakworth recalls the devastation of losing her locks following her first bout of chemotherapy in January. “Losing my breast didn’t affect me half as much as losing my hair, because once you put a jumper on your body is covered up,” she says.

“When I looked in the mirror and saw the scars it upset me, but when I looked in the mirror after losing my hair I was devastated.”

Bessie originally sourced her wig through the hospital service but Sue was recommended by a friend she met during her treatment.

She arranged to see Sue and they looked through photographs of Bessie before she lost her hair to achieve the perfect colour match.

“It’s bad enough going through the treatment but at least if you feel you are looking decent it boosts you a little bit. Sue’s service is absolutely fantastic. It saved my sanity,” says Bessie.

Margaret tells how her wig gave her the perfect camouflage while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. “You come to terms with it yourself and then it’s like a visible public explanation of what you are going through, but you are not in control of how people view you unless you take it into your own hands and say, ‘I want the best possible camouflage or wig you can have’,” she says.

Sue, who is Margaret’s hairdresser, helped her select a short highlighted style to wear until her own hair grew back. “It is fab. From the first time I put it on it was how I’d always wanted my own hair to look and it gave me the confidence,” says Margaret, a business consultant from Bradford.

She says no-one apart from close family and friends knew she had cancer and no-one suspected she was wearing a wig. She recalls the compliments she received. “People would say, ‘I love your hair like that’. It is up to you whether you say it is a wig, but it was a great boost,” says Margaret.

Doctors told Margaret her hair would grow back in six months. “They are looking to save your life, not your hair, but what I needed was someone to say, ‘For the next six months you wear this and it is fab’. It’s like an addition to the wardrobe,” says Margaret.

“I just wanted it to look as normal as possible and it did. I have a great fondness for it even now. It was my friend. We went through it together and it looked so good.”

Sue looks after alopecia sufferers too. But not all Sue’s clients have lost their hair. She has sourced wigs for women who just want a different look without dramatically changing their style.

For more information visit parrucca.co.uk