I am a community theater costume designer working in Washington State with very limited budgets. I needed a wig for Mr. Tim Tully, a local actor who had created a one-man show with himself portraying Charles Dickens. His costume was to be a faithful reproduction of Mr. Dickens' appearance in public readings from his published works in the United States in the 1860's. I made a perfectly tailored nineteenth century wool frock coat, waist coat, pants with suspenders and a silk shirt with pearl buttons, a detachable linen collar and silk cravat. Mr. Dickens' hair was medium length,curly, slightly Grey and thinning. The old photographs showed a rather messy comb over! He also had a scraggly beard covering his neck and a droopy mustache. Tim was clean shaven with shorter hair. His day job prevented him from growing his own hair out or growing a beard or mustache. The only wigs available were costume wigs of synthetic hair for Ben Franklin or a samuri warrior. I knew neither would do! I realized that I needed to create the wig from a human hair wig to match the level of construction of the costume. I chose the Cory wig in dark brown with 5% gray for the quality, color and length of the hair. I then removed the dark crown, trimmed off the hair, stitched new wefts on my sewing machine and reapplied them to a lighter colored net base to match the actor's scalp color. Then a local hairdresser trimmed the wig to his style. A good spray with heavy hold hairspray and some finger combing finished the transformation. The remaining hair was used to create his beard and mustache, also wefts stitched to light nude net. The only problem was that Tim had a larger head than even most men and the wig was made for a woman's head size. Luckily Tim's hair color blended well with the wig color and he was able to let some of his hair leak out under the nape and sides. He could blend his hair into the wig hair with finger combing. This even created the longer sideburns look we wanted. The wig has held up well and even survived a professional shampoo and comb-out on a tour of the show to Pennsylvania in December. As Mr. Tully's 'Dickens Reading Dickens' appears to be quite well received by the theater audiences, I expect soon to purchase another Cory wig to make a back-up wig.