Wigs & Wishes To Celebrate With Annual Gala, Co-hosted by Paula Abdul & Their Dynamic Founder
Martino Cartier is frequently referred to as a celebrity stylist, but his relationships with pop culture figures aside, he finds himself, more often than not, the celebrity. Owning one of the top rated salons in the America, his charm and endearing personality are also a hit on television – the line of products that bare his name rank as the most popular hair brand on all of HSN.
Yet, in ever increasing circles, his career as a stylist may be seen as his ‘other’ job, as Cartier is so closely associated with his commitment to charitable good works – particularly through Wigs & Wishes, the organization he founded that supports women and children who are battling cancer by providing premium wigs for the former and personalized wishes for the latter.
On October 23rd at the Rivers Casino in Philadelphia, Cartier and his close friend Paula Abdul will co-host Wigs & Wishes’ 10th Annual Gala, a charitable ‘must attend’ for it’s spare-no-expense mixture of energy and excitement, combined with poignant, life affirming moments (courtesy of several of the organization’s beneficiaries). Tickets can be purchased here: Wigs and Wishes 2021 Gala
Cartier recently took some time out to discuss his latest efforts on behalf of women and children with me. Links to follow, share and support Wigs & Wishes can be found at the end of the interview.
Robert Ferraro: Wigs and Wishes is pretty clearly defined as a network of salon owners, stylists, and beauty experts who help provide beautiful wigs to women and wishes to children who are battling cancer. But you really can’t explain it to people fully unless you explain who you met in the spring of 2012, and how that may have affected you.
Martino Cartier: There have been so many special kids that we have helped, but when you said 2012, I knew you meant Kiki. Long story short, she was diagnosed for the second time with Wilms tumor, which is a form of kidney cancer. She was 11 years old and terminal, and there was no one that would help her – none of the big nonprofits that you would usually go to if a kid with cancer needed hair replacement – and her mom, out of frustration, reached out to one of the freeholders in New Jersey who then reached out to us. At that time we hadn’t worked with children. We only worked with adults, typically breast cancer patients, but when we heard her story, we didn’t want to say no. We said, “Let her come in. Let’s meet her and see if we can figure out a way to do a wig for a kid for the first time and maybe grant a wish.” It was just so new to us.
Robert: That started a close relationship between you.
Martino: It did. Seven months later, she not only looked cancer free, but she met Justin Bieber for the third time through us, only to lose her battle seven days later. But what came out of that is now known as Wigs and Wishes, which helps so many kids, and has pretty much rocked the universe for the last decade, right? It doesn’t stop. It continues to grow.
Robert: That’s one of many interesting things about your organization – you’re constantly off in seemingly unplanned directions. You’re always evolving.
Martino: Definitely. For instance, I recently sold my house and bought a property where I now live, where we have a petting zoo. It’s called ‘Zoo Hoo, Where Dreams and Wishes Come True’. We’ve only been here since August 2nd, and we’ve already granted wishes for kids that are in need. It’s pretty exciting.
One of the many positive uses of Cartiers’ Zoo Hoo, described in this Instagram post.
Robert: So that’s where the alpaca videos are coming from.
Martino: [laughs] That’s where the alpacas are coming from. You mentioned evolving, and here’s an illustration I gave someone the other day. We brought a bunch of kids from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia – inner city kids that were all fighting cancer, most of whom have since passed on – and flew them first class to Orlando to play basketball with Shaquille O’Neal. When we got there, we all went to Dave and Busters, and a lot of our kids didn’t have hair. And when a child who has hair is around another child who doesn’t, it’s instinctive for them to say, “Mommy, why doesn’t he or she have hair?” So now here we are, taking a child to try to give them an experience, and they hear that. There just isn’t a word that could describe the painful feeling that they must feel. So I felt like, what am I doing? I’m failing in my mission to help these kids. So now, at Zoo Hoo, I bring only bald kids on certain days, their days, and I fund it by having days where regular kids who aren’t battling cancer can come. Birthday parties and bat or bar mitzvahs or whatever help fund a private haven for kids with cancer, and that haven is where I live.
Robert: Almost everything your charity does is large and vibrant, and even when things are carried out on a smaller scale, you add a flare to it. Did you have any role models or model organizations for all of this, charity or entertainment wise? Or is this just an extension of your personality?
Martino: That’s a tricky question. Being adopted and searching for 22 years to find your birth family and getting that wish granted to me…then ironically losing my birth mother this Memorial Day to stage four cancer, which was the first person really close to me outside of someone I met through my journey as a philanthropist…really changed the way I look at cancer patients. When you talk about mentors, Mindy Grossman, who was the CEO of Weight Watchers, has been a huge mentor to me. She’s the one that told me, after I lost a boy named Logan and had a complete meltdown, “You cannot save them, but you can make them smile while they can.” When she said that, it resonated with me. And she is a very, very philanthropic person, along with Paula (Abdul), as you know.
Wigs & Wishes Galas are fully produced entertainment spectacles that celebrate the organization and the women and children who are its beneficiaries.
Robert: Paula’s contributions, just to your galas alone, are humbling.
Martino: She is our ambassador. She gives her time, her talent, and her treasure to our charity like no one else. There are a lot of people that I give credit to, because look, it takes an army to make a difference and we’re blessed that we have that army. God has placed the right people at the right time in our path. You can have a dream, you can have a goal, but if you don’t have an infrastructure or a support system, you’re not going to achieve anything.
Robert: As more and more people contribute to your organization with their time and their money, you expand the size and scope of your ideas, your annual gala being no exception.
Martino: Exactly. We felt like we were robbed of our 10th anniversary celebration last year, for lack of a better word. So this year, at Rivers Casino in Philadelphia, we get to really celebrate it in an extraordinary way. We’re going to have Paula Abdul co-hosting, auctions, ice sculptures, over the top hors d’oeuvres, pre-show entertainment, and an after party, which is all sold out. Then everyone attending gets a free play to play at Rivers Casino afterwards, after the closing fireworks show, which will be over the Schuylkill River. So, we’re going to go out with a big bang this year, literally, and it’ll be one of our most exciting years yet, celebrating everyone who’s come together to make Wigs and Wishes what it is today.
Robert: Many charity events have celebrity appearances to create excitement and sell tickets, but the great thing about yours is that many of the people who benefit from your charity, women and children alike, are among the attendees, and several of them find themselves featured on stage with Paula and yourself.
Martino: 100%. For instance, every year we crown a woman ‘Queen of the Night’. That means a woman who has a spectacular story gets brought out on stage in front of hundreds, if not thousands of people, not to mention the live feed audience, and she comes out brave and bold and beautiful. The dress is donated, the jewelry is donated, the shoes are donated, and the wig is donated – all of them beautiful. And she enters to a beautiful inspirational song with dry ice and all the effects that go with it. We transform her into ‘Queen of the Night’, and this year we have not only a queen, but two princesses being crowned. Two young, beautiful, brave girls. Well one, I should call her grandmother queen of the night actually. I don’t want to give too much away. She’s awesome, and I can’t wait, lord willing, to be able to grant her the honor that she deserves this year.
Visit Wigs & Wishes website here: WigsandWishes.org
Purchase tickets to the 2021 Gala here: Wigs and Wishes 2021 Gala
Follow Wigs and Wishes on Instagram: @WigsandWishes
Follow Wigs and Wishes on Facebook: @WIGSandWishes
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Robert Ferraro engages in conversations with pop culture figures. Recent guests include Melissa Etheridge, Paul Stanley, Ann & Nancy Wilson of Heart, Belinda Carlisle, and Darryl McDaniels of Run DMC.
