Daryl Dixon Wig Tutorial

By Willow Enright

Norman Reedus as Mr. Daryl Dixon from AMC's The Walking Dead

Attempting to capture the details of your favorite characters can be as mind boggling as it can be rewarding. There’s nothing worse than being able to convincingly recreate their clothes, props, and identifying features but not be able to sport their characteristic locks without drastically changing your own hair to match. Finding the right wig can go miles when it comes to your cosplays, and not breaking the bank. Especially, when you've have a different character for each day of the con, you'll need more than one wig. Note, this is the first wig I have ever manipulated.

I found mine on Ebay from RightOn, Men's Medium Wavy Heat Friendly (150 c / 302 f) Synthetic Wig in dark brown, and it was less than $20. I also made sure to use a good reference photo of the character before starting my wig sculpting, hint, you've already seen it.

Ebay Image of the wig used

Wig right out of the bag

Original Wig before I got my grubby hands on it

First thing out of the bag the wig was very poofy, and required lots of palm petting to calm down the wig fibers. This transfers the normal oils of your hair to the synthetic wig hairs. The wavy style had the whole top part of the wig swept over, and I had to separate the long bangs to give them that classic Daryl part. Usually, this would be the time to brush the wig, but this is Daryl Dixon and he doesn’t brush his hair. So, I used my fingers which seemed appropriate.

First layer of hair products

Second layer of hair products

First application of coconut oil

Wearing the wig, I applied two different hair care products, Alterna Life Curls Detangler and Avon’s Curl Goddess Curling Mist. The detangler helps the synthetic hair to avoid knotting up. While the Curling Mist gives some body to the flat wig. I spritzed the products over the wig and used my fingers to scrunch it into the synthetic hair. ​

More Coconut Oil

Coconut Oil and some bang trimming

Cut some actual bangs

Water is hard to come by in the apocalypse so washing your hair isn’t a priority, especially to a snake eating dirty fiend like Daryl. In order to obtain the greasy dirtiness that he usually sports, I used coconut oil. Rubbing it into my fingertips and then running them through the wig hair. I did this a few times until I was satisfied with the amount of grunge. Since the bangs were designed to sweep over to the side they were quite long and I had to do some random trimming to help create the disheveled  bangs of Mr. Dixon. The end results completely tie together the costume, makeup, and props wonderfully!

My freshly wet hair

Here you can see me in full Drayl Costume. If you'd like to know more about how I created the rest of the costume you can click here: Creating TWD's Daryl Dixon. Stay tuned for next's week's blog about how wig making doesn't always go as planned when I discuss Clarke Griffin's (The 100) wig making experience. 

All dry and at the Con! I'm standing next to a fantastic cosplayer, Tina Rivets.