Hair, Wigs & Scarves
My Love Affair with Hats and Scarves During and After Cancer
Wigs & Scarves
In Treatment
Post Treatment
Patients
February 9, 2025
By JC Chessell
It’s funny – as I sit here about to blog on my ‘expertise’ with hats and scarves, I find myself wearing a knitted toque aptly placed on my head. I do not know which came first: my love affair with hats or the loss of hair, which led me to my love affair of hats. Whichever it is, I still find myself wearing hats and head coverings A LOT. And I love it!
Today, I wear them out of personal freedom and choice but wearing hats during my treatment is forever a memory etched on my heart. Having cancer made it less of an option and more of a necessity for me to wear hats, but I enjoyed the look and the way they warmly protected my head.
I’d like to share my personal guide to “Covering Your Head During Cancer Treatment”.
Let’s say you’ve just been diagnosed and are thinking of covering your head with SOMETHING. You will discover there are various options for your head covering: hats, scarves and wigs (natural and synthetic).
Having so many choices gives us each more control as we move through our personal journeys. You will find that having a head covering, such as a scarf or hat, gives such a nice, quick pick-me-up and you may feel better about yourself and your outward appearance.
I mainly wore hats through my chemotherapy and radiation sessions. I kept my natural-hair wig for special occasions, like weddings and events.
Since I was diagnosed at the end of summer going into fall and cold winter weather followed, practically speaking, hats were my favourite and most sensible option. As you decide which head covering to go with, try to think about what look you want to present.
Hats give us SO many options, from fun and sassy to a more laid-back, practical type of look. You will see how your face changes as you wear different shapes, from the wide-rimmed to the smaller fisherman cap. And it only takes a second to put on a hat. Again, the choice is yours.
Scarves, I find, are a better option for spring/summer weather. Your scalp has breathing space due to the softer fabrics and overall, scarves have a lighter feel on the head. If you allow your imagination to run really wild, you can create a gorgeous scarf ‘up-do’ with layers of different scarves, thus allowing for height and dimension to frame your face—think Eryka Badu.
If you are deciding on a scarf option, my only advice would be to stay away from silk since the fabric slides off easily on bald or short hair scalp and will become more of an annoyance rather than anything else. The rest is up to you. And this is really where you get to play up different looks
Thankfully, new companies pop up offering us so many options with fabrics, colours and texture. And here’s a little do-it yourself tidbit: go to Fabricland, pick out a pattern that catches your eye—one that speaks to you. Ask the sales associate to cut off a specific amount of it (enough to wrap around your head at least twice) and make into a headscarf yourself. You may need to practice the wrapping a few times but soon enough, you’ll be an expert.
You should know that Look Good Feel Better workshops offer head/scarf wrapping info catering specifically to you and me, so that we can become more comfortable with how to wear our scarves in different ways. There are also lots of scarf-tying tutorials on YouTube, to give you even more ideas. You can start with this from Look Good Feel Better.
