• People will feel sick when they discover!
Spoiler alert, it isn’t just from someone with extremely long hair chopping it all off.
The price of good quality hair extensions can be an eyewatering amount – but do you know where they really come from?
Ranging from £200 up to £1500 depending on the quality of the hair, it’s a pricey beauty treatment to have. But hair extensions are extremely popular with beauty fans around the world. Usually, people will opt for real hair over synthetic hair so it looks natural, but now people are vowing to throw their clip-ins away after seeing where they have come from.
Certified trichologist (a specialist who focuses on scalp and hair issues) Afsennah shared a video online revealing the true origin of hair in hair extensions. She said: “You know that most affordable human hair extensions come from city drains?” The specialist then further shared: “That’s right. In India, workers actually collect hair from public drains and plug holes. They clean and treat this hair, making it look nice and shiny. But the truth is, it’s not virgin hair.”
The revelation has caused outrage online and has been viewed more than 480,000 times as it showed the process of hair being collected. Some people have even gone as far as to say they’re throwing their extensions away. One beauty fan wrote: “Think it’s time I put mine in the bin.”
However, it’s important to note that not all extensions are made this way. A BBC investigation found that hair taken from drains and combs is marketed as “standard” hair rather than “Remy” or “Virgin” hair types that are also available. Virgin hair is at the top end of the market – and this means it has never been chemically treated.
“Remy” hair means it has been shaved directly from a donor, and then “standard” hair is from combs and drains. So the sleek glossy locks you see may have actually just come out of a plughole. “Chinese factories will often call the comb waste hair ‘standard hair’ because a lot of the hair comes through that route,” says Tarlo. In terms of marketing, it’s up to the integrity of traders all the way along the line to specify what hair is what. Quite a lot of mislabelling goes on and often the people buying it don’t ask questions anyway,” the BBC report stated.
The investigation further found: “All over Asia, long-haired women will save the hair that comes out when they comb or wash it and once they’ve got a few years’ worth they’ll sell it to the pedlars who go around these neighbourhoods calling out for hair.”