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silencedrowns · 24 days ago

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(don’t reblog this update) so I’ve been trying out more of the Amazon brands of wigs because I know it’s more accessible and I want to have recs that more people are likely to use than “ordering from overseas with shopping service” and spoiler some of them are actually good enough to get added to my go to wig merchant list 👀 I’ve got to go get the links together for them but an update is coming for the cosplayers on a budget

Wig Seller Masterlist

Some people on were asking if I had a post about this and I didn’t, so I thought I’d make a big master post of wig companies I like! It’s in alphabetical order, with information about them listed afterwards. Currently I have fifteen brands on this list, but if I try and am really impressed by another, I’ll add it. I hope maybe one of them has that hard to find wig you’ve been searching for! I have the color samples for Arda, Assist, Classe, Coscraft, Cyperous, Kasou, and Swallowtail and am willing to help you check if a color from them is correct or not.

Airily

Japan only brand, so you’ll need a shopping service. Wide range of colors, including some that are hard to match in other lines, and a lot of base styles that I like more than other brands. Sells both wefts and lace front pieces. Lace hairline wigs are also available. Fit is medium (not particularly large or small). Price is higher. Swatch book not available.

Alice Garden/aiyaya

Amazon wig brand selling lolita/natural looking wigs. The variety is not good but if they have something that looks like what you need to wear with very little styling, you won’t get something as nice for the price! Styles are all very natural looking. Fit is on the smaller end of medium. Price is low. Swatch book not available.

Aoi Wig

Taobao brand doing character wigs, so a shopping service is required. These are hands down the best character wigs I’ve ever worked with. If you don’t want to do a ton of styling and they have the character you want, you literally cannot go wrong here. Fiber isn’t the world’s most durable but will hold up for multiple wears, and the price is good enough to make up for it. Fit is slightly small but larger than most taobao wigs. Price is a bit high for taobao but is still dirt cheap for what you get. Swatch books not available but the photo color is exceedingly accurate.

Arda Wigs

American based. One of the most common brands for a REASON! Wide range of colors in a wide range of styles. If you have a larger head or a lot of hair, this is your new best friend. They sell lace fronts but not individual lace pieces. The big problem with them, however, is the stock issues. Colors run out quickly so sometimes you have to compromise on which style you buy, or place an order from one of their sister sites in another country that actually has the color you need. (OOPS this is no longer an option anymore! Luckily there are a lot of Arda wigs secondhand online.) Nobody has as much hair in their wigs as they do, which can actually be a problem in some styles; be prepared to pluck lace fronts and use thinning shears. Fit is LARGE; they have the largest wigs in the market. Price is a bit high but not exorbitant. Swatch rings are available for both their fiber types

Assist

Japanese brand, ships worldwide but EMS/fedex only so you’ll probably want to group order. Nobody in the market has as many colors as Assist; between their premium and basic lines, they have over 600 colors! DO NOT TRUST THEIR PRODUCT PHOTOGRAPHY TO PICK COLORS; you need to buy their swatch books or ask a friend who has them to help you choose, because those photos can be criminally inaccurate. If you ever order from them, buy a bottle of Face Cover Glue and watch it change your life as “wig sticks away from face and face framing pieces move out of place” become a distant memory, and I adore their contacts! They sell wefts and lace pieces in their premium line but not their basic. Price varies; Premium line is a great price for what you get, but Basic is incredibly cheap (but not quite as good quality). Fit is small; based on how they fit my clients they’re the smallest of the Japanese brands and if you’ve ever found taobao wigs too small, assist will probably also be too small for you. Swatch books or rings are available and also required.

Blue Beard

Taobao character wig brand, so shopping service is required. Blue Beard wigs are all affordable and decent. You won’t ever get a bad wig from them, but I’ve found that their wigs tend to require a lot of maintenance. Wide range of characters! No wefts available. When you find stolen taobao wig photos, more often than not they’re stealing from Blue Beard. The photos are all color accurate, but you’ll typically need to do a lot of styling to make the wig match the photo. Price is great for what you get. Fit is medium to small. No swatches available.

Classe

Japanese brand that requires a shopping service but oh what a brand it is. Classe has a wide range of colors but where it truly excels is in the range of extra styling supply options. You can buy lace front pieces, yes, but you can also buy stand alone skin top pieces in center whorl or long for parts. No brand is as flexible with what you can do with their wigs, not by a long shot. Make sure to check out their styling blog! Even if it’s all in Japanese, the diagrams are clear and the techniques are genuine life savers. The fiber is beautiful and the website’s color suggestion feature where the desktop version tells you a list of characters they’d use this color for makes picking colors a lot easier. You’ll pay a lot for them, but what you get will be worth it. I’ve been using them a lot lately because no other brand’s fiber is as easy to make behave like human hair. Naturalistic wig stylists and cosmetology people, this brand is for you! Fit is up to 59cm (!!) and is roomy in the hairline coverage to the point some people have to trim the ear tabs a bit shorter, although it’s my personal comfiest fit. Swatch books are available and affordable.

Coscraft

Based in the UK but ships worldwide despite being way too unknown outside Europe. Coscraft is an absolute gem of a site with a wide range of colors (more than 80!) with plenty of unusual color options that aren’t found anywhere else that doesn’t need a shopping service, a decently large variety of base styles to choose from, and wefts and separate lace front pieces and stick on skin tops in every color. Unlike every other cosplay brand on the planet, their lace front pieces come in dark brown lace for darker skinned cosplayers and not just beige! (The skin top pieces are only in beige so far but hopefully they will work on this.) Also for some reason they sell ridiculously inexpensive corset coutil so for all the craftsmanship people, new source acquired! Even if you’re outside of Europe, Coscraft is so nice that it’s hard to believe their prices. When the pound is up vs your currency, they’re shockingly affordable. When the pound is down vs your currency, the quality per money feels straight up illegal. This is my current go to cosplay wig site for a reason. Fit is larger medium; it won’t be too big or too small on most people. Color swatch ring is available.

Cyperous

Japanese cosplay wig source that theoretically ships EMS outside Japan but I haven’t been able to get that to work for years so shopping service it is. Pour one out for Cyperous; they’re clearly in decline but as one of the original heat resist brands, they’re still here and still worth ordering from while you can. Nobody has as beautiful and delicate blondes as Cyperous; their Milky and White Milky are the best blondes I’ve ever used. They have a nice selection of lace wigs and the much rarer lace bang wigs as well as regular wigs, and wefts of course. No other brand I’ve seen has synthetic wigs that photograph as much like real hair as Cyperous. They can tangle a lot as a result but it’s worth the upkeep. I have no idea how long they’ll keep limping along, but look them up before it’s too late. Price is high but reasonable for what it is. Fit is a true medium. Swatches used to be available and no longer seem to be, but the photos are pretty accurate to my ancient swatch ring and newer wigs.

Five Wits Wigs

Five Wits is the most criminally underrated of the American wig companies because most of their stock photos suck. They really, really, really suck. The photos are somehow incredibly color accurate but represent the wigs as pulled directly from bag and plopped onto someone’s head or a mannequin without even combing them in a flattering way. I wrote them off until I got to see their booth at a con and realized quickly that these wigs are wonderfully made with beautiful fiber that typically photographs like a dream (how do they get such bad stock photos?!) and is so easy to style! Five Wits mostly stocks character wigs, but many of them are versatile enough to use for tons of other things and they offer wefts for some of their colors. The owners are friendly, the service is great, the actual wigs are beautiful, the price for what you get is wonderful, but those dang stock photos keep people from noticing why Five Wits is one of my favorite suppliers! Price is great for what you’re getting, especially for an American brand. The fit is larger end of medium (very few people find it too big or too small). They don’t carry swatch books but every single stock photo, despite being terrible, is an incredibly accurate depiction of the color so feel free to judge colors accordingly.

Kasou

I almost hesitate to put Kasou on here considering that one of the problems with them is that their shipping when it’s from their Chinese warehouse is occasionally “good luck getting your wig”, and I disqualified another past favorite of mine for this, but Kasou squeaked onto this list for two reasons: 1) their fiber and wigs really are spectacular and 2) they have the ONLY Jolyne Kujo pre made wig that I don’t hate. Order from them with confidence that whatever you get will be nice, but keep in mind that there are enough people who’ve had issues with wigs from their Chinese warehouse that you want to give yourself months of lead time if you go that route. They have a decent if slightly expensive price range, medium cap fit, and they do offer swatches. I NO LONGER RECOMMEND KASOU. I still stand by their products being nice, but there have been too many extremely expensive packages lost in the mail with them refusing to refund/replace among cosplayers I know for me to put them as a recommendation. If you order from here, do it with caution.

L-Email / wig-supplier

Not everyone needs premium wigs for heavy styling all the time, and that’s where L-Email comes in. This Chinese-based seller that ships internationally will sell you decent character wigs and decent base wigs for an incredibly affordable price. Nothing from here is going to be spectacular, but if your budget is low and you’re willing to put in a bunch of effort to make up for that, what you need is just a plain wig without tons of styling, or you want a character wig that’s a bit easier to upgrade with extra styling work than other brands because the hardest parts are typically done for you, L-Email is a great option for you. They’re just all around decent, and sometimes that’s what you need. Fit is medium, prices are pretty affordable especially if you go in with friends for shipping, and there aren’t swatches but the photos are typically pretty color accurate.

Sepia

One of the absolute oldest wig companies based in America; every cosplayer active before 2007 has bought at least one Sepia wig. They’re still here though, and now they have some heat resist lace fronts! Their range of fantasy colors is pretty atrocious but if you want some beautiful natural colors, you could do worse than shop here, especially considering there’s at least one more expensive brand (that I’m not putting in this list) that sources lace fronts from Sepia and resells! Fit is medium, price is medium, I haven’t bothered to see if they have swatches because I’m an ancient cosplayer and have the typical Sepia color codes memorized.

Swallowtail

If you’ve heard of this Japanese (shopping service required) wig brand before, it’s probably because the canon wigs in My Dress-Up Darling all come from Swallowtail. There’s more reasons than flexing about how you have the canon Shizuku-tan wig to consider Swallowtail, though! They have a massive color range with a lot of colors I’ve seen nowhere else in the world, and while the fiber isn’t the world’s most durable and is a bit shiny for my tastes in some colors, they’re affordable enough to be a competitive option even if you have to use a shopping service from outside Japan. They offer a full range of wefts and lace pieces and clip ons and a wide variety of base styles. The fit seems to be pretty true medium, and they definitely offer swatches (in the most chaotic ring setup I’ve ever seen. You’ll want to resort that one fast.)

Sylvia_Wig

You can get a lot of decent lace fronts perfect for minimal styling on AliExpress, but Sylvia is my hands down favorite. If you need a natural looking lace front and you don’t want to spend tons of money, this seller is where you should be looking first. There aren’t any swatches or wefts, true, but the wigs have so much more lace than any of the American or Japanese cosplay wig brands, the caps run much larger than most taobao/aliexpress brands (comparable to Kasou or Five Wits), and there’s still plenty of hair to do more basic styles. The fiber is a bit thin and shiny, but it still photographs like a dream, and dollar for dollar you won’t find a better balance between quality lace front and budget friendliness than here. The hairlines are so natural that I have a few from here that haven’t required a single hair plucked to just… melt into my skin. There’s a reason this is my go to first source if I want a lace front and it’s not going to be heavily anime styled (like JoJo or Dragon Ball or whatever). Color stock photos are incredibly accurate; you can trust that what you see is what you’ll get!

since people have sent me asks about this: I do not recommend Epic Cosplay at all anymore. Their construction quality has drastically decreased in recent years to the point I keep getting people asking me to help fix Epic wigs that are literally falling apart, which is enough reason to not want to order from them, but they’ve also had a decade plus pattern of labor rights abuse and employee mistreatment including racism, transphobia, homophobia, ableism, and pregnancy discrimination.

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silencedrowns · 2 months ago

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Full cosplay makeup list!

Since I had some questions after doing a makeup panel at CitrusCon, here is my FULL list of my personal non-character-specific cosplay makeup items, including what colors I use.

Warning: I am extremely pale and grey. Not all of these products have as wide a shade range as I wish they did. This is my own personal list only. Some of these would work great on a wide range of skin tones though! You might notice there’s tons of blushes and eyeshadow palettes here; that’s because I use different colors depending on the characters and their wig colors, but everything here is used for multiple characters.

I’ve linked to everything you can still buy online (since some of these were limited) and described the limited ones so you could get replacements. Yesstyle links are technically affiliate links? I don’t remember signing up for any affiliate code but the links have one so uhhh if you buy from there I might get some reward???

I’ve accumulated this kit over a long, long period of time so it’d be ridiculous to buy it all at once, but almost everything is under $30 and the vast majority is under $20. I love a bargain and I don’t have the cash to buy luxury makeup, no matter how much I might covet those Dior lip products at Sephora.

List and links go under the cut because this is REALLY LONG.

Base makeup

Elmer’s purple disappearing glue stick

Elf Power Grip primer

Canmake Mermaid Skin Gel

Tirtir Mask Fit Red Cushion in 10C Shell

The Saem Cover Perfection Triple Pot Concealer in 03 Correct Up Beige

KimChi Chic powder in Ivander

Club Suppin Powder (I use a limited variant lavender one purchased physically but here is a rose version you can get online)

Blush, contour, and highlight

Peripera V Shading in Grayish Cool

Canmake Shading Powder in 04 Ice Gray Brown

Rituel de Fille Intuition

Etude Lovely Cookie Blusher in PP052 Lavender Lemon Macaron

Etude Lovely Cookie Blusher in PK004 Peach Choux Wafers

Cheerflor Angel Embossed Blush in 1199

Cheerflor Angel Embossed Blush in 1196 (this is a blue color that is a full cheek highlighter. Do not buy this unless you’re extremely pale and either cool or grey.)

Canmake Cream Cheek in CL01 Clear Red Heart

LBCC Historical Apothecary 1745 French Powdered Rouge

Eyeshadow type stuff

Urban Decay Primer Potion

Blend Bunny Blends palette (this is my favorite rainbow palette ever! i can blend any eyebrow color or almost any weird character specific eyeshadow color from this palette)

ROM&ND Better Than Palette in Dusty Fog Garden (this is a must have if you’re light skinned and cool toned. the best nude palette. it even has a grey row useful for both contouring and for toning down too-bright colors!)

A Flortte palette that was limited edition 😭😭😭 but any of pink brown cool palette would work in its place. Think Urban Decay Naked 3 or ROM&ND Peony Nude Garden. This color scheme is currently very popular in K-Beauty and C-Beauty but not in the USA, so you’ll probably have to order online

Urban Decay Moondust in Space Cowboy that I got as a gift but you can easily get the same look and spend a lot less by buying…….

C-Beauty glitter singles. Mine were limited edition but I have literally never tried a C-Beauty glitter from Yesstyle that I didn’t like. You can’t go wrong here.

Too Cool For School Artclass Frottage Pencil (yes, seriously) in #11 Dew Beige

NYX Jumbo Eye Pencil in Milk

KimChi Chic Juicy Nine Palette in Mango Tango

Flower Knows Swan Ballet Six-Color Makeup Palette in Black Swan

Eyeliners

Rozo Cat Print Liner in A13 Tea Grey

Rozo liner in black and dark brown (currently unavailable and I’m replacing with more extra fine tip Chinese liner. I love extra-fine Chinese eyeliners. You don’t need to be great at drawing eyeliner when your eyeliner is already so thin!)

Merry Monde Super Twim in 03 Earl Grey Latte

Urban Decay 24/7 pencil in Perversion

Colourpop liquid white eyeliner (not happy with the performance of this and I want to replace it with not-Colourpop due to wizard collaborations but it’s the best I have found so far 😭)

Focallure Glittering Liquid Eyeshadow in S01 Gray Lily

A pencil the color of my skin meant for my waterline but idk what it is because the lettering rubbed off nearly instantly

Mascara

Heroine Make Long & Curl Super Waterproof (or advanced film) in Black

Assorted colors of Heroine Make Mascara that I’ve only seen at physical stores that carry Asian makeup (sorry!!) (find a dark grey mascara for white or silver hair characters though, it’s so worth)

Heroine Make Mascara Remover (this works in every mascara!!! get this if you hate mascara on your lashes at the end of the day. 11/10 this is an incredible product)

I don’t currently use it but I also really like Judydoll mascara

Fake lashes

Literally whatever I bought at the beauty section in my local Asian market or off Aliexpress. I’m cheap lol. Don’t buy lashes off Amazon because if the package doesn’t look fucked up, the company sends returned lashes back out as new. Yuck yuck no thank you. Do not want this.

Lips

A second (and marked so it goes nowhere near the eyes! Don’t let the same liquid item go on your eyes and lips!) Merry Monde Super Twim in Earl Grey Latte

A cheap black lip liner. Literally get one at the dollar store or Daiso or wherever and it’ll be fine.

Dolly Cosme Lip Base (beige) (only get this if you’re already proxy ordering from Classe)

Peripera Ink Velvet in 26 Well-made Nude (I need a better nude. This one sucks on me but it’s still the closest I’ve found.)

Lilybyred Glassy Layer Fixing Tint in 12 Muscat Shower

Lilybyred Glassy Layer Fixing Tint in 06 Rosy Rose

Lilybyred Smiley Lip Blending Stick in 06 Chuckle With Me

Flortte 2 in 1 Lip Pencil in 04 Bean Paste

Clear lip gloss

Literally just whatever lip balm I have around

Setting sprays I like

Urban Decay All Nighter

Ben Nye Final Seal

Other

ASSIST FACE COVER GLUE AS!!!!!!!!! BUY THIS ASAP IT IS MY FAVORITE COSPLAY SPECIFIC ITEM even if you have to do a group order to justify Assist shipping. You roll this on your face and then lightly stick the wig to it and the wig hair will stay in place. Perfect for face framing pieces or that one bang piece that needs to stay somewhere or lace front gluing for just a day. Comes off with a makeup wipe. You need this.

Banila Co Clean It Zero Cleansing Balm won’t spill in your bag but will delete cosplay makeup

Cheap sheet mask after you take off all your cosplay will help your skin feel less angry!

If you choose to use face tape, I like Classe’s best and Assist’s next-best

Eyebrows are typically drawn on with colors from my Blend Bunny palette, with shadow and highlight strokes done with my grey and white eyeliners. I also have some character specific items that aren’t on this list (weird lipstick colors lol) and I’m not fully happy with most of my options contour and lip color, so I’m actively looking for something I might like better. I often skip colored lip product in favor of clear products because I have extremely pigmented lips.

Also if you’re wondering why my kit is almost entirely Asian makeup… it’s because I’m extremely grey, which is an undertone America does not cater to, and also I’m cheap and C and K beauty are more affordable. I wish more of this stuff were more inclusive! seriously! but this isn’t a list of products and colors for everyone, it’s a list of what specifically works for me. (Canmake Clear Red Heart though. That’s one of the most inclusive blush colors I’ve ever seen. It’s nothing but red pigment suspended in clear. Even if you think you’re too pale for red blush or you think a Japanese blush would make you look ashy, you should try it! If I could only have one blush in a kit where I were doing makeup for the entire spectrum of human skin, I’d pick that.)

#cosplay #makeup #cosplay makeup

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