Alamo's Oldest Business Closing Soon

The oldest business in Alamo, a throwback to a bygone era in which women often wore wigs as part of everyday fashion, is closing its doors in a couple of months.

The opened as 'Wigwam' in 1959 in Alamo Square. It moved to Las Trampas Center in 1963. The store's owner, Alamo resident Mary Jane Jossey, says she is closing the business so she can spend more time with her family, including five grandchildren.

Over the last 52 years, Jossey says women from around the Bay Area have traveled to her shop to buy custom fitted and styled wigs, as well as carefully selected fashions and jewelry.

Jossey and her family put down roots in Alamo in 1959. She says they were drawn to the beauty of the area, the tunnel of trees that once lined Danville Boulevard and Alamo's small-town feel.

“It had little-town atmosphere,” she says. “That has never changed.”

She didn’t set out to be a shop owner.

Jossey had worked as a singer, performing on stage and radio from the age of 5. She was a lyric soprano with the Berkeley Opera Theatre and sang at the Danville Presbyterian Church.

When her husband, a commercial pilot, brought back wigs from Europe, a popular trend in the 1950s, she was impressed by their quality and the ease the wigs afforded her as a busy mother of two, she says.

The seed of the idea of a wig shop was planted when she chatted about the trend with a girlfriend and saw an opportunity to introduce local women to the look and ease of wigs.

When Jossey opened her original shop in 1959, there was only one other wig seller in the Bay Area, in San Francisco.

Jossey says the San Francisco shop sold unfashionable and unnatural looking wigs—more suited to a stuffy aunt than a fashionable woman of the day.

Her shop was an immediate hit.

She says it was so popular in the early days that a security guard managed the parking lot. It was regularly crowded with customers in the otherwise quiet suburban community in which "people still rode their horses to the grocery store."

Over the years, Jossey says busy women with little time to keep up a fashionable hairstyle sought out her shop.

The struggling economy actually sustained her business, she says.

Many women consider it an economical option, she says, when you factor in haircuts that can cost upward of $75, as well as styling and maintenance products.

About 60 percent of Jossey's clients are undergoing chemotherapy. She says that segment of her customer base, sadly, has been surging the last several years.

Customers usually come in before beginning treatment, and Jossey meticulously matches their hair color,and works with them to style the wig in a private nook in the shop.

“They often bring photos in with them of how they would like to look,” she says.

Her decision to close her business is motivated not by business concerns but by her desire to be more involved with her family, including five grandchildren who live in the area.

Her dedication to her clients hasn’t left much time to attend baseball games and “fun activities," she says.

She also fell in the shop last year, which left her with chronic pain and convinced her it was time to close.

Jossey says she will continue to serve her longtime customers from home.

She is teaching customers who bring their wigs in for cleaning how to do it themselves.

Jossey says the highlights of her accidental career have been the customers, many of whom have become “dear friends.”

The House of Fashion is at 3221 Danville Blvd., in Alamo. Hours are Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m.-4 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m.-3:30 p.m.; Closed Sunday and Monday.

Merchandise is 50 percent off.