Abby Wren joined us on our Instagram Live series to celebrate Alopecia Awareness Month. She shared her alopecia story and her message of, “Different is Dope.”

Abby is a professional makeup artist from Los Angeles, but she grew up in rural Montana. She was in high school when she first started experiencing hair loss. What started as alopecia areata quickly turned into alopecia totalis, and at the age of 16 she found herself bald. In Montana there really wasn’t anyone who looked like her. The people in her town were country people and had a certain standard of beauty that she didn’t fit into.

Over the next ten years her hair all grew back, but alopecia was always there. Sometimes there would be patches of hair loss, but she could easily hide them with clip in extensions. In 2018 she was doing makeup at New York Fashion Week. It was such an exciting time in her career, but also very stressful. As you may know, stress is a catalyst to alopecia, and the added stress led to almost all of Abby’s hair falling out again. Her supportive partner, Wade, gave her a pep talk and helped her shave the last strands. Since that time there has been minimal growth and it has been a journey of self acceptance and celebration.

Embracing alopecia has propelled Abby’s makeup career forward in ways she couldn’t imagine. Before she lost all her hair, she was primarily working on other people, but after she lost her hair she saw herself as a blank canvas. This gave her a new appreciation for her alopecia.

Abby now works in content creation. Her purpose is creating awareness about the hair loss community in the makeup space. With the lack of representation in the makeup ads today we see a lot of the standard of beauty we’ve seen for a long time. It is hard to feel like it is okay and even beautiful to be bald. However, Abby believes we should celebrate our differences. Her message to the world is “Different is Dope”. That means, not only should we accept our differences, but we should celebrate them. She wants little girls to look at women like her and think, “That is cool and I want to be like her.” Abby has been working with the Baldtourage to share makeup workshops to adults and children experiencing hair loss. Also, every October she shares the 31 days of Halloween. A series of different makeup looks and she intentionally uses her bald head as a canvas. If you are looking for some bald-inspiration check out Abby Wren’s Instagram just in time for this year’s Halloween series!

This month is all about celebrating alopecia and bringing awareness to all! Many of our team members have experience with alopecia and are here to help you. If you have any questions about our products made especially for those with hair loss please contact us.