The Lake County collaborators of Northwestern Hair Restoration
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When I built our collaborator network, the practices I sought out were the ones doing work that I respected but that we could not credibly offer in-house. HairLab Chicago was at the top of that list. Debbie Ansay-Martinez and Chanel Kwak built the practice in Deerfield over more than twenty years, and the trichology and non-surgical hair restoration work they do has set the regional standard. Patients across Lake County and the North Shore know HairLab as the place to come for serious, evidence-based work on hair loss that requires more than medication and is not yet a candidate for transplantation. That category of patient is real, and it is underserved nearly everywhere else.
I collaborate with HairLab because they do something that medical and surgical hair restoration alone cannot do, and they do it at a level that genuinely advances what we can offer patients together. The trichology evaluation Debbie leads — the structured holistic workup, the high-resolution scalp imaging, the integration of lifestyle and hormonal and autoimmune factors into a treatment plan — extends our diagnostic depth in ways that no medical practice can replicate without dedicating itself fully to that work. The CRLAB CNC Hair System that Chanel anchors is the most sophisticated non-surgical hair restoration option available today, and the precision Chanel brings to fitting and styling it is, in our experience, unmatched in the region.
HairLab has been recognized by Modern Luxury, North Shore City Lifestyle, and other regional editorial publications for the work they do across the Lake County and North Shore market. They serve women navigating autoimmune hair loss, postpartum and stress-related thinning, perimenopausal and menopausal hair changes, cancer recovery, female pattern hair loss, lifestyle-related scalp imbalance, and trichotillomania — along with men experiencing the same conditions. Our collaboration brings their work into the same consultation pathway as Northwestern Hair’s surgical and medical hair restoration, with the practitioners rotating between locations so that patients in any of our geographies can access the full range of care.
HairLab Chicago describes itself as a place where compassion meets clinical expertise. The framing matters because it is honest. Hair loss is not a cosmetic inconvenience for the patients HairLab serves — it is something that affects identity, confidence, professional life, and the way patients move through the world. The practice exists to address that reality with the seriousness it warrants, and Debbie and Chanel have built the practice around the conviction that the work of hair restoration should heal more than the scalp.
The substance of their mission is the integration of two approaches that most practices treat as alternatives rather than complements. HairLab merges holistic trichology with non-surgical hair restoration technology. Every treatment plan is grounded in clinical assessment and guided by an understanding of what hair loss costs the patient emotionally. The framing they use publicly — empowering women, and everyone, to feel whole again — captures the orientation of the practice clearly. They are women-first by founding and by patient base, and they serve men through the same clinical pathways.
Board Certified Holistic Health Practitioner, Trichologist, and Master Colorist. Debbie is the diagnostic lead at HairLab Chicago, where the trichology evaluation she designed sits at the foundation of nearly every patient’s care plan. Her work combines high-definition trichoscopy and microscopic scalp imaging with a structured intake that covers health history, lifestyle, hormonal balance, nutrition, and autoimmune activity. The premise is that surface examination of the scalp cannot answer the question of why someone’s hair is thinning, and that the answer almost always lives in the integration of these factors rather than in any one of them alone.
Debbie’s path to this work was personal before it was professional. Several years before HairLab Chicago opened, she lost her hair to alopecia. The experience of looking for solutions and finding the field structurally underdeveloped is what eventually became the practice. She and Chanel — who has her own alopecia history — built HairLab out of what they had needed and could not find. The trichology specialization Debbie pursued, the holistic health credentials she added, and the integration of scalp imaging with whole-body health workup all grew from that starting point.
What patients see in a consultation with Debbie is the integration. The trichoscopy session captures the scalp at high resolution; the intake captures the parts of the patient’s history that the scalp alone cannot reveal. The output is a personalized regimen — which may include scalp detox therapies, ozone or LED-based protocols, nutritional guidance, and a structured home-care plan. Debbie manages care over the months and years that real restoration takes, adjusting the regimen as the scalp and follicles respond. Patients return to her not for one-time intervention but for ongoing partnership in their hair restoration.
Through our collaboration, Debbie’s trichology work extends beyond the Deerfield clinic. On the first and third Mondays of each month, she travels to Northwestern Hair Restoration’s main location in Chicago, where she sees patients for trichology consultation, scalp evaluation, and CRLAB CNC Hair System consultation by appointment. On the second and fourth Mondays, she travels with me to our Western Suburbs location at Lifelong Health in Clarendon Hills, where the trichology evaluation joins with Dr. Kate Volmir’s functional medicine workup to deliver a depth of evaluation that single-practice clinics structurally cannot replicate.
Hair Replacement Systems Expert, Master Stylist, Co-Founder, and an industry indicator in the field of non-surgical hair restoration. Chanel is the craft side of HairLab Chicago. The CRLAB CNC Hair System she anchors is engineered with precision in Bologna, Italy — a custom prosthetic built from a 3D scan of each patient’s scalp, with virgin hair selected to match the patient’s existing color, texture, density, and curl pattern. The system arrives as a piece of technical perfection. What turns it into a piece of hair that lives with the patient — that looks and moves like the patient’s own hair under any condition — is the styling and finishing work. That work is Chanel’s.
Forty-five years as a Master Stylist sit underneath this craft. So does something more personal: Chanel lost her hair to alopecia herself, and her own restoration runs through the same CNC system she helps her patients wear. The system is not an abstract product for her. It is part of her own life. The precision she brings to fitting and styling on a patient is grounded in knowing exactly what it is like to depend on the system she is finishing — what feels natural and what does not, what looks like real hair under salon lighting versus what looks like real hair through a workday and through sleep and through everything else a patient does.
The styling work for the CNC system is genuinely a craft. The base of the system has to sit on the scalp in a way that disappears at the hairline. The hair has to be cut and finished so that it falls the way the patient’s own hair fell before. The density across the system has to match the surrounding hair where the patient still has hair, and feel right where they do not. The color has to be matched not just to a swatch but to the way light moves through it. None of this is automated. None of it is reproducible at the speed and quality Chanel delivers without the combination of stylist experience and lived experience that she brings to it.
Chanel is the constant presence at HairLab Chicago in Deerfield. The CRLAB CNC Hair System is designed, fitted, and styled at the Deerfield clinic because the equipment and setup are there, and because Chanel is there every day the clinic is open. A patient whose case calls for the CNC system comes to Deerfield for that work, the same way a patient whose case calls for a hair transplant procedure travels to our main Chicago location for that work. Both are decisions about where the specialized work belongs.
HairLab Chicago organizes its work around what they call two paths to hair restoration. The two paths are complementary, not alternatives, and patients commonly travel both — sometimes simultaneously, sometimes in sequence as their case evolves.
The premise is that hair loss is most often a reflection of contributors that begin below the surface — hormonal shifts, nutritional gaps, autoimmune activity, stress patterns, scalp condition. Surface treatment of hair without addressing those contributors tends to underperform; integrated assessment and treatment of the underlying contributors tends to produce restoration that lasts. Debbie’s clinical philosophy holds that the trichology evaluation is rarely the only intervention a patient needs, but it is almost always the foundation that makes the rest of the work productive.
The premise here is different. For patients whose hair loss has advanced beyond what regrowth alone can address — alopecia universalis, totalis, areata in its severe forms, scarring alopecias, post-chemotherapy hair loss, advanced female pattern hair loss, and the cases where confidence cannot wait for the years that medical restoration takes — the CNC system delivers immediate, undetectable, full-density restoration. Chanel’s philosophy holds that the technical sophistication of the system only matters if the craft of fitting and finishing brings it to life on the specific person. That craft is where her work lives.
Patients commonly combine both paths. Trichology work continues even when a patient is wearing a CNC system, because the goal is always to support whatever native hair the patient has, even when the CNC system is the primary visible solution. Conversely, patients whose trichology work successfully restores their hair may still benefit from CNC XT extensions for volume or density that regrowth alone cannot quite reach. The two paths reinforce each other.
The services HairLab offers at the Deerfield clinic, and through the rotation at our other Northwestern Hair locations, are organized into the two paths described above.
The trichology consultation, scalp imaging via high-definition trichoscopy and microscopic imaging, the structured intake covering health and lifestyle and hormonal balance, the personalized restoration regimen with scalp detox therapies and ozone or LED-based protocols and nutritional guidance, and the ongoing care across the months and years that restoration takes.
Where to find it
HairLab Chicago, Tuesday through Saturday. Northwestern Hair Restoration’s main Chicago location, first and third Mondays through Debbie’s rotation. Western Suburbs location in Clarendon Hills, second and fourth Mondays.
The custom hair prosthetic handcrafted in Bologna by CRLAB, built from a 3D scan of each patient’s scalp with virgin hair matched to the patient’s specific color, texture, density, and curl pattern.
Where to find it
CNC consultation is available at all three Northwestern Hair locations through the rotation. The CNC system itself is designed, fitted, and styled at HairLab Chicago in Deerfield, where the equipment lives and where Chanel’s finishing work happens. Most ongoing maintenance also happens at the Deerfield clinic.
The extensions version of the CNC technology, designed for patients seeking volume, fullness, or length rather than full coverage. Uses the same 3D-printed precision as the standard CNC system but functions as a non-damaging alternative to traditional extensions.
Where to find it
Available at the Deerfield clinic. maintenance also happens at the Deerfield clinic.
The results below are drawn from HairLab Chicago’s published patient cases. They represent the range of hair loss patterns the practice treats and the two paths to restoration.
Menopausal hair loss
Before
After
Menopausal hair loss
Before
After
Alopecia universalis
Before
After
Androgenetic alopecia
Before
After
HairLab Chicago is located at 707 Lake Cook Road, Suite 118, in Deerfield, Illinois. The practice operates Tuesday through Saturday, with full clinical scope across both service paths. For complete operational details, hours, scheduling pathways for both Northwestern Hair and HairLab Chicago, our service area across Lake County and the North Shore, and the rotation schedule that brings Debbie’s work to our other Northwestern Hair locations, see our Lake County location page.
707 Lake Cook Road, Suite 118
Deerfield, Illinois 60015
