Proof you can have hair extensions, discreet extensions can offer a better, thicker head of hair

My friend eyed me suspiciously over the dinner table. ‘You look different,’ she said. ‘Sort of polished and put together. You don’t look as tired as usual either. What have you done?’In the assembled company, I felt cornered. Yes, I was looking marginally less tired, even if I say so myself, but the reason for my makeover of sorts was not a trip to an expensive spa, a week off in bed or even a sneaky dabble with Botox — it was something far more unlikely. My thin, mousy, straggly hair, never worthy of comment, had been boosted with secret Hair Extensions. That’s right: that TOWIE staple, the WAG beauty must-have, alongside orange spray tans and fake talons.

But what most women don’t realise is there’s another, more subtle version available, that is more Chelsea than Chigwell. They are favoured by Hollywood actresses and It-girls, but also by professional women and West London mothers like me, which is how I came across them in the first place. A few months ago, on my way to a party at a gallery with an Oxbridge-educated historian and fellow mother of small children, I commented on her hair — slightly tousled, glossy, mane-like — and she let me into the secret. Like me, she’d been cursed with fine hair and a rat’s tail instead of a nice fat pony tail, and so she’d had extensions. Not the waist-skimming, synthetic-looking ones (worn like a badge of honour, with ostentatious designer labels and handbags, by women desperate to let the world know they have money to splurge), but discreet extensions that gave her a better, thicker head of hair.

The scales fell from my eyes. Suddenly I got it. All those women on television, in magazines, with lustrous hair — Victoria Beckham, Kate Beckinsale, Elle Macpherson. Those dressed-down French editor types, in silk shirts, jeans, and the supposedly low-maintenance ‘natural’ look? Those glamorous Russians who all look so much more high-octane than their British counterparts? Well, they all — or nearly all, anyway — have hair extensions on the sly. The cheats! Indeed, in France they’re so accepted that one of the leading manufacturers of hair extension products is Balmain, the fashion house.

Around the same time, a male hairdresser who was styling my hair — I think he was also having a bad day — practically threw a tantrum because it wouldn’t do what he wanted. ‘It’s not your fault, darling, but your hair really is impossible!’ he kept muttering. He had a point. I have the sort of fine hair that can shake off an expensive blow-dry in minutes and would still flatten itself if you reinforced it with concrete. My natural hair scoffs in the face of mousses, gels, sprays and all those fiddly volumising things, seeing itself as the bastion of lifelessness. I thought it was something I just had to live with, until my friend confessed her secret. So it was with some trepidation that I finally found myself in the chair of Stephanie Pollard at The Chelsea Hair Studio. Extensions don’t come cheap — from around £400 for real hair and from £250 for monofibre, the synthetic equivalent. Stef advised a ‘volumiser’ — around 100 small tresses — of real hair, the same length as my own. Hair donated by Spanish women would provide the best match.Looking at them, laid out like dogs’ tails, I did feel strange. Whose hair was this? What was their story? Why did she choose to sell it? I will never know. It feels weird — like an organ transplant without the health excuse. The extensions are stuck, tress-by-tress on to your own hair a centimetre or so from the scalp, using a blob of melted resin heated by a gun-like contraption. As I sat in her chair, Stef and I flicked through Hello! magazine and she analysed who’s had what. I’m telling you, they’re all cheaters. It’s like real-life airbrushing and it gives them all a decade drop in age every time.

British aristocrats, starlets, tycoons’ wives, self-made women... Stef’s clients range in age from their early 20s to an academic who’s 86, and most of them keep their extensions secret. As my hair took shape, I had several bolts of panic when I thought: ‘I am making a ludicrous and expensive mistake.’ Why the sudden burst of silly vanity, I wondered. Two hours later, though, I had lighter, thicker hair that looked completely natural. On the walk home, I enjoyed the sensation of slightly weighty hair bouncing on my shoulders for the first time.

I hadn’t told my husband, and I wasn’t sure he would notice. But he said my hair looked ‘nice’,which was momentous as he doesn’t usually say anything. The next morning, however, I woke up to the practicalities of extensions. You can’t run your hands or a brush through them in the same way. You do brush it, but more gently. It’s thicker but messier, which I rather like. I still washed it every other day, but used an acetone-free shampoo that wouldn’t weaken the resin.

I loved my extensions; the biggest satisfaction was gathering it into a ponytail and feeling it, thick and heavy as a horse’s mane. I’ve had the ideal reaction, which is being asked: ‘What have you done? You look younger...’ without anyone actually guessing the truth.

I was warned they would need replacing after three months. So, around 12 weeks later, back to the salon I went for another £400 ‘fix’.

That’s the problem: they are addictive. One friend even says she has an alter ego when she has them in: she calls her ‘Madame Swish’.She’s had extensions for six years. She says that with swishy, cascading hair she thinks she can wear a tracksuit and still feel amazing. ‘Swishy’ in fact.‘Trouble is my husband doesn’t like Madame Swish. He prefers me as a dowdy, natural type. He says he’s horrified by the idea, but actually I think he’s horrified by the cost,’ she says.

It’s such an expensive habit that she must have spent nearly £10,000 over the years. There have been famous examples of hair extension habits going wrong. Naomi Campbell’s shocking bald patches have been blamed on her years of too-tight hair ‘weaves’ (where a patch of hair is sewn into the existing locks) — something Stef assures me cannot happen with my extensions because they are much lighter. My friend is on a break from extensions. Her hairdresser thinks her hair would benefit from ‘lying fallow’ for a bit, but is desperate for more. She says: ‘I really am dependent on them now for confidence.

I felt they took me from a four out of ten to a six. I just have a better time when I have them in.’ I sympathise entirely, and fear I may be heading into full-on addiction. I don’t know how long I can justify my new habit, but I’m already dreading being without them.

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