Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.

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. 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; they’re the smallest of the Japanese brands and if you’ve ever found taobao wigs too small, they’ll also be too small for you. Swatch books 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. Fit is a true medium, comparable to non-Arda western brands. 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 that you won’t find in other non-Asian brands, a decently large variety of base styles to choose from, and wefts and separate lace front pieces in every color. 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 for its price that with a favorable exchange rate, they can be more than worth checking out. 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.

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. I have to go fix that sometime.)

Sylvia_Wig