Hair! Human Stories

Synthetic wigs and artificial hair fibre such as kanekalon came onto the mass market in the late 1960s, stimulating a boom in wig wearing and creative hair play. Huge factories emerged in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and later China. New fibres were absorbed into black hair cultures and wigs and toupees offered women and men from all backgrounds a cheap way of transforming their appearance. For a while it looked as if human hair would disappear from the market. But synthetic hair looked less natural and was less versatile than human hair. With the popularity of hair extensions in the 1990s, the demand for human hair rapidly increased.