A waist-high fence barricades the entrance into Union Square’s grassy center, which is the size of half a football field. On a Sunday afternoon, a dressed-down crowd respects the area’s boundaries, except for a 24-year old with faded neon violet roots and pastel blue hair. In a black top, mini skirt, leg warmers and Converse sneakers, Natasha Orion sits with her friend in the south-west corner of the field, containers of Japanese take-out food spread across a folded tote that displays graphics of gangster skulls.
The self-proclaimed “natural born badass” has made it a bi-weekly habit to dye her hair fantasy colors using Manic Panic, a semi-permanent color cream introduced in 1977 by the NYC-born, Blondie backup singers and sisters, Tish and Snooky. She buys a 4 oz. jar for $10 and dyes it herself, a procedure that can cost over $400 at a salon. Three years ago, shortly after moving to New York City from her hometown in Phoenix, Arizona, she became bored of her naturally blonde locks and colored them dark purple. This started a pattern of experimentation with different shades, which she says has added volume and conditioning to her frail tresses.
“I thought it would make me more confident. At first I was all ‘Fuck you corporate world,’ but it’s actually made me more humble,” she said. “I wake up some mornings feeling self-conscious about the way people see me and I don’t want to face them, but then I tell myself, ‘Well that’s what it looks like so I guess I’ll just have to accept it.’”
Natasha is 5’9, fair-skinned and has aquamarine eyes. Her look has opened some doors to employment but closed others. Colorists, bartenders, and modelling agents have approached her about jobs. She landed her current gig as a waitress at a midtown Manhattan bar because of her eccentric style. Before that, she interviewed for a waitress position at a fine French restaurant, where her entry briefly silenced a room of posh clientele. The managers went forward with a formal 20-minute interview, but in the end rejected her, which she blames on her hair.
None of this has caused Natasha to rethink her choices – nor has her displeased mother. She will likely return to blonde for her wedding day, but is obsessed with color, and can imagine herself sporting a funky hue even as an older lady.
“It’s helped strike up lots of conversations,” she laughs.
Alyssa Sholl, stylist at Hairroin Salon in midtown Manhattan, begins a neon-color procedure by pre-lightening hair to a pale yellow using a bleach product, and then deposits Pravana, a professional dye brand. The color has conditioning agents, but Sholl says it’s not enough to reverse the damage created by lightening. Color correction is most ruinous to dark hair which is often accomplished after multiple stages, unlike light hair which Sholl says is easy to work with. Cooler neon pigments are most popular among her clients, and in recent months she has seen a surge of men that request these tones.
“Some of my clients hold high up positions, and it’s nice to see workplaces have become more accepting,” she says.
To achieve a similar look, others increasingly seek out neon wigs and extensions. Christina Woo, a middle-aged Chinese-American manager at the midtown west wig outlet, Mane Beauty, has seen a spike in the sale of neon wigs since earlier this fall, when Kylie Jenner stepped out in a lime-colored ombre wig. Woo’s store sells wigs that range from $20 to $1000, with a few priced even higher. Light shades of unprocessed human hair with a lace front designed to look like natural roots are the most expensive, followed by a blend of synthetic and human fiber, and the cheapest is pure synthetic. Neon and glow-in-the-dark wigs are usually fully synthetic and cost no more than $100.
Woo’s clients range from 15 to 90 years old, and about 80 percent of them are women, predominately African-American women, and 20 percent are male or transvestites. Some are cancer patients or have hair conditions such as alopecia, an autoimmune disease that causes hair loss. Most, just want to change their look but don’t want to damage their own hair, or find it convenient to throw on a coiffed wig.
“There is a misconception that women and men buy wigs because they are balding, but most of them just like to play dress-up. They’re able to take on another persona,” she says.
At Beauty 35, a cosmetics store further north on 8th Avenue, there is a wig section stashed in the back, with the most expensive item, a blonde wig that sells for $600. Four young Asian women look weary behind the counter. Adele’s song “Hello” plays in the background as a tall and slender 21-year old girl pops out wearing a mid-back length silver wig. Cedella Sergel, a glitch music producer with over 1,600 Instagram followers, goes by the name “theglitchbitch”. She owns a green and pink wig, colors that represent her alter artistic ego, and express her glitch style, which is a form of electronic music. She uses the neon wigs for photo shoots; otherwise, the African-American diva wears more neutral-colored wigs across town, collecting compliments and social media followers.
“Other glitch artists produce only music but I’m doing something different by combining it with my modelling,” she says.
She throws her brittle jet black hair into a fishnet, fits her head into a metallic blue wig, poses confidently in the mirror, and hums along to Adele’s words: I’m in California dreaming about who we used to be. When we were younger and free.