We live in a world where so much of our identity can be derived from how we look, and women unfortunately carry the lion’s share of this burden. Our hair, and how it makes us look, so often feels like everything. As Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag famously decreed, we wish it didn’t, but – for some of us – it can make the difference between a good and bad day.

Gina Knight had to take a second look at how she viewed her identity – and how her hair fit into that – when she was diagnosed with stress-induced alopecia in 2013. Her hair meant a great deal to her, it was intertwined in both her heritage and her career, and what she decided to do next would turn out to be a huge step for both.

After much thought, she decided to shave her hair off and start a new chapter, as well as a new business. On Stylist’s Nobody Told Me podcast – sponsored by Clinique – she has opened up about the new community she has cultivated for women to reinvent themselves. Her business, Gina Knight Wig Design, was born after she made herself her first wig in 2016 – three years after her diagnosis.

What started out as a side hustle began to evolve when Knight realised that she could make a difference. “I thought ‘do you know what, people are taking notice, and people care about this business, not just me,’” she says, describing how she started out by listing her wigs on peer-to-peer shopping app Depop, and was pleasantly surprised when she sold three on her first day.

Knight was adamant from the beginning that her wigs would cater to Black women facing hair loss. Many contacted her with similar stories to her own, who had felt like they had to go through their ordeal in silence. “[When I started out], there were a lot of wigs out there for people with hair loss, but there wasn’t a lot that spoke to Black women and natural hair. And that’s really what where I wanted to be different,” she says.

“I thought losing my hair was the end of life as I knew it – turns out it was just beginning”