If you’re a fan of Made In Chelsea, then you may already know that one of its biggest stars, Olivia Bentley, suffers from a type of hair loss called alopecia – something that she recently opened up to Cosmopolitan about.
Liv explained that the condition is something she’s lived with since the age of 16, when after getting out of the shower on a family holiday in Mallorca, she combed her hair and noticed a bald spot the size of a 2p.
“I thought I’d pulled my hair while tying it up or had caught in in my sleep or something. The last thing I thought was that it was alopecia,” she explains. “After that, whenever I showered big clumps of hair would come away in my hands. It was horrible.”
It’s thought that two in 1000 people have alopecia, while many others experience hair loss for other reasons.
The diagnosis
As a teenager, Liv says she found it especially difficult to come to terms with her hair loss, recalling times where she cried at school because of it. After a couple of months, it was her mum who eventually took her to the doctors where the alopecia diagnosis was made official. “The GP asked if I’d made any changes recently and I explained I’d just started taking a contraceptive pill called Yasmin. I’d not been warned that hair loss could be a side-effect but it’s there in the small print.”
Alopecia, the medical term for hair loss, happens when the immune system attacks the hair follicles, causing it to fall out – the hair can grow back but it may fall out again. In Liv’s case it manifests as bald spots and very fine hair.
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Sadly, her confidence was massively dented by it at first. “It was shocking, it just made me feel so unattractive. I’ve always had really fine hair anyway, so was self-conscious before the alopecia diagnosis – I remember once being out with my Dad and somebody jokingly called me Oliver, and I was like ‘Oh my god, everyone thinks I look like a boy’.”
Dating with hair loss
Dating was a challenge at times too. “One boyfriend said he wasn’t going to have kids with me because I was bald. I remember thinking ‘What a bastard!’ at the time but I was so scared, it made me feel shit. Now, I look back and think I should have called him a prick but at the time I was too afraid.”
Liv also worried about what men would think running their hands through her hair and coming across hair extensions (which she now admits were a bad move, as they put stress on the hair they’re clipped to).
“I also remember once, when I was dating a different guy who had no idea I was wearing a hair piece, in the night I got really hot, took the wig off and threw it on the floor. In the morning, he clocked it and was like ‘Oh my god I’m deathly allergic to cats’ and I thought, ‘That’s weird, I don’t own a cat’ then realised what he was pointing to.”
Liv confesses that, embarrassed to tell him the truth, she picked up the wig, stroked it and put it outside her room, pretending it was a pet. “I should have just said it was a fucking hair piece.”
Reclaiming her confidence
Since then, Liv has developed various coping tactics, which include wearing a wig rather than extensions, using Black Jamaican Castor Oil, keeping her hair cut short and putting sunglasses on her head. “It’s funny, when we’re filming Made in Chelsea I’ll be sat in a nightclub with sunglasses on my head. I don’t know if people think I do it to look cool but it’s actually because they covered a bald patch, it’s a habit now.”
These days, she feels far more confident and says she's grown a thicker skin over time. Her experience of hair loss has also changed the way she views other people – having realised that true beauty is more related to being a good person than appearance.
“Some of the girls I used to look at and think, ‘She’s amazing, she’s so nice’ actually have the ugliest personalities which makes them ugly in turn. My boyfriend [Digby Edgely, who also appears on the show] very sweetly said that if he was going to go for a girl based on looks, that he prefers short hair too. I don’t know if he said that just to make me feel better, but it did either way.”
In future, she hopes to start a charity that provides people who suffer hair loss with wigs, if they're unable to afford one themselves. Three cheers to Liv for using her platform to bravely and honestly speak about a condition that impacts so many people.
To hear more about Liv’s journey with alopecia, pick up the newest issue of Cosmopolitan and tune in to Made In Chelsea every Monday on E4.
Jennifer Savin is Cosmopolitan UK's multiple award-winning Features Editor, who was crowned Digital Journalist of the Year for her work tackling the issues most important to young women. She regularly covers breaking news, cultural trends, health, the royals and more, using her esteemed connections to access the best experts along the way. She's grilled everyone from high-profile politicians to A-list celebrities, and has sensitively interviewed hundreds of people about their real life stories. In addition to this, Jennifer is widely known for her own undercover investigations and campaign work, which includes successfully petitioning the government for change around topics like abortion rights and image-based sexual abuse. Jennifer is also a published author, documentary consultant (helping to create BBC’s Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?) and a patron for Y.E.S. (a youth services charity). Alongside Cosmopolitan, Jennifer has written for The Times, Women’s Health, ELLE and numerous other publications, appeared on podcasts, and spoken on (and hosted) panels for the Women of the World Festival, the University of Manchester and more. In her spare time, Jennifer is a big fan of lipstick, leopard print and over-ordering at dinner. Follow Jennifer on Instagram, X or LinkedIn.
