Keeping a promise: Society hairdresser makes fancy, free wigs for women undergoing chemo
Big Town, Big Heart
BY TRACY CONNOR
Saturday, March 3rd 2007, 4:00 AM
It wasn't a doctor, or a nurse or a medical researcher.
The Madison Ave. stylist, a favorite with the ladies who lunch, had a program to provide top-quality, custom-made hairpieces for lower-income women who were about to undergo chemotherapy or radiation.
And these were no ordinary wigs. They were made from real human hair, bought off young mountain girls in Europe, each strand expertly colored and woven into a polyurethane cap perfectly molded to the patient's skull.
"I wore it to my 10-year high school reunion and my best friend's wedding and no one knew."
"I'm not vain but you don't realize how important it is until you are looking in the mirror and see yourself bald."
That's because of a promise the coiffeur made to his mother, Sofia, years ago when she was dying of breast cancer, her glamorous platinum locks destroyed by radiation.
He apprenticed with a top Argentine stylist and then went to work for the famed Alexandre de Paris, who tamed Jackie Kennedy's tresses.
While he was making a name for himself in France, he got the call that his mother was sick and he flew home to be with her as she went through surgery and radiation.
"My mother was a very beautiful woman. She looked like a movie star," he said.
"One day she was very depressed and I said to her, 'Don't be depressed. They can reconstruct the breasts.' And she said, 'It's not my breasts. It's my hair. My friend reminds me every morning I have cancer.'" The "friend" was the mirror.
After his mother died, he began trying to improve on the prototype, consulting French toupee makers and searching out hair suppliers.
And when he moved to the United States two decades ago, opening a salon in Cedarhurst, L.I., he took his promise to his mother with him.
He's also campaigning to get insurance companies to cover more of the cost of prosthetics for cancer patients and gives a discount to any woman who comes in with a copy of a current mammogram.
Most of his cancer clients are referred to him by oncologists who have heard about his Sofia's Hair for Health foundation, although survivors also spread the word.
"From the minute she walked in the door, he maintained her pride," Brendler said. "He took her to a private room, he did whatever he could to make her feel good."
The results were amazing, she said.
"No one knew she was wearing a wig. She kept her sickness a secret," Brendler said. "At my son's bar mitzvah, she looked like she did at my wedding."
After their mother's death, Brendler and her sister, Debbi Weiss, donated the prosthetics they had bought so someone of lesser means could benefit from them.
It was, Brendler said, the least they could do for a man who had shown her mother, and so many others, such kindness during their toughest time.
"His heart is as tall as he is!" she said.
His quest to fulfill his mother's dying wish and craft the perfect wig made him one of the premier creators of hairpieces, extensions and accessories.
Whenever a new patient comes through the door of his salon, he feels Sofia smiling down on him.
"She is here with me," he said. "Her spirit is here."
Originally published on December 12, 2006
CLICK HERE TO ENTER TO ORIGINAL ARTICLE SITE
<BACK TO SOFIA'S HAIR FOR HEALTH MAIN PAGE
|