The personal hair care and haircut market is huge, from wigs to weaves and hair extensions. But few people know where these shiny locks come from and their journey around the globe.
Search the internet for wigs or hair extensions and you’ll see a dizzying number of options. “Luxurious” virgin hair from Brazil or Peru. “Pure” Mongolian hair. “Best Remy” hair from India. Stylish European weaving. But you rarely see hair from China in advertising, even though most hair comes from China.
China is the largest exporter and importer of human hair, receiving large quantities of it from its own population, and Emma Tallow discovered in a three-year study that hair loss occurs when hair is no longer attached to our scalp. What a change.
”People in the industry understand that ‘Made in China’ is perceived as a negative label, so they promote it in a more glamorous way,” said the anthropology professor and author of “Tangled: The Secret Life of Hair.”
Browse many online dictionaries, blogs and hair tutorials and you’ll learn that the Chinese have the thickest hair, the Filipinos have similar but shinier hair, the Brazilians have “thick and beautifully bouncy” hair, and the Indians have “versatility with natural sparkle.” “. Definitions are varied and vague.
“The more you try to understand it, the more elusive it becomes,” Tallow said. “European hair is the most valuable, partly because of its fine texture, variety of colors and because it is available in smaller quantities.” Most of this hair comes from Eastern European countries such as Russia, Romania or Ukraine.
At the top end of the market are “virgin” hair (hair that has never been chemically treated) and “remy” hair, which is cut or shaved directly from the donor.
At the other end of the scale is “standard hair,” a more popular term often used to describe brush waste. Yes, many sleek and shiny hair extensions, Chinese or otherwise, start with clumps of hair gathered into combs and plugged into holes.
”Chinese factories often refer to combing waste as ‘standard hair’ because a large amount of hair is produced this way,” says Tallow.
“From a marketing perspective, the honesty of traders in the industry should make it clear what hair is all about. Quite a lot of mislabeling persists, often without any questioning from customers.”
“People don’t want to be haunted by the ghost of the person whose hair they were born with. There’s still an uncomfortable factor to the whole idea of buying and wearing other people’s body parts,” she said. The entire supply chain is shrouded in mystery from start to finish.
Hair from Indian temples is sorted at a factory in Chennai to eventually end up in expensive hair salons in the West.
There is a whole industry for carding, sorting and recycling comb waste. Although the finished product always passes through China on its way to its final destination, it is likely a mixture of hair from many Asian countries. “There was no difference, everything was mixed up,” Tarlow said.
“Across Asia, women with long hair keep the hair that falls out when they comb or wash it, and when it has lasted a few years, they sell it to traders who go around the neighborhoods begging for the hair,” Luo says. She said she pulled some of her own hair out of the bag – a dusty pile of brush scraps collected over more than three years, worth about 80 pence ($1).
All this hair is collected together and passed from trader to trader until it ends up in hair salons in parts of Bangladesh, India and, most recently, Myanmar – countries where wages are low and people need work.
Tallow visited workshops and homes in Myanmar and India, where she saw dozens of women sitting on the floor, untangling clumps of other people’s hair and sorting them into bundles by length. “It’s hard and time-consuming work: it takes about 80 hours of labor to untangle 1.5 kilograms (3.3 pounds) of hair,” she said.
In Myanmar, women receive 100 grams (3.5 ounces) of hair in the morning and another 100 grams in the afternoon. Villagers would also come and buy piles of leftover combs to take home, untangle, and sell back to the barbers.
Next comes processing. The outer layer of hair, the cuticle, has scales that point in one direction, like the scales of a fish. But the problem with comb trims is that the hair gets tangled – the scales point in different directions, causing the hair to tangle and tangle. Tarlow explains that in China, hair is often placed in a chemical bath to completely remove the cuticle. “This solves the problem of frizz, but the lack of cuticle results in poor hair quality,” she says. “However, at the end of the process they will look great, like a prize tail. You won’t know what path this hair has taken.”
In 1912, when the Manchu dynasty was overthrown in China, men were ordered to cut off their braids, and some had their hair cut off forcibly by revolutionary guards. “Many of these braids have already entered the hair market, but traders are concerned that if men stop growing long hair, their source of long hair in men’s braids will be exhausted.”
In the late 1960s, the Chinese hair products industry faced problems again when the United States banned so-called “communist hair.” “It was during this time that Indian hair became important to the industry,” Tallow said.
Millions of people visit Hindu temples in southern India every year to shave or have their heads trimmed for religious reasons. This is an ancient tradition.
“It was made as a religious offering to fulfill a vow, whereas in the early days it was just floated down the river and thrown away,” Tarlow said, describing the noise of the barbershop where the ceremony was held. At Tirumala, about 650 barbers crowded into barber shops while pilgrims sat cross-legged on the floor in front of them. The barbers work quickly and the hair is quickly collected and sold every few months to the temple authorities through electronic auctions.
Hair from India was the main supplier of wigs to Orthodox Jewish communities in Europe, the US and Israel until 2004, when a delegation of rabbis from Stamford Hill, north London, came to find out whether the hair was kosher.
“A delegation was sent to Israel by an old Lithuanian rabbi to find out whether the hair was a religious offering or could be considered religiously neutral,” Tallow explained.
“Although the ceremony was performed outside the temple, they came to the conclusion that it was too confused with idolatry. Women were asked to burn their wigs, which caused a big crisis in the market as it cut off access to the Jewish market from the Indian hair cycle.” .
Post time: Jun-29-2024