Synthetic hair shows human care

Liverpool has been chosen as one of the cities to sell a new range of synthetic hair extensions, following concerns that the use of human hair is neither ethical nor hygienic.

The grim reality of human hair extensions is often ignored by hairdressers making too much money and girls with luscious thick hair. However, Steph Stevenson, creator of Salon Confidential hair extensions, thinks this has gone on too long.

Steph was at Dorothy Perkins in Liverpool city centre launching her line of hair extensions, which she has supplied to the stars this year’s X Factor and are due to feature on Hollyoaks.

Glued in hair extensions have been getting more and more bad press of late because of the sheer damage they are doing to women’s hair and with resources of human hair badly depleted, realistic synthetic hair is an ethical alternative.

Steph, a hairdresser, started to question the human hair extensions she was buying for her salon after hearing horror stories about batches arriving into the country with nits, hair fungus and infections.

She took a trip to China in August to get a better idea of where the hair was coming from and how it was produced, she said: “I wanted to know for myself, I was sick of being told, I didn’t believe what I was hearing. The companies that were selling to me were saying, ‘Oh yeah it’s ethical, don’t worry’. It’s just been in my nature, let me go and find out, and so we went on a research trip and found out that it wasn’t.”

The trip revealed a very different story and confirmed fears that the hair is produced unethically in very poor conditions.

Steph recorded shocking videos of factories making the hair extensions in China, vast warehouses filled with human hair, which workers wash by hand before selling it on to our high street.

Factory workers could not confirm whether the hair was ethically sourced or if it could be certified clean.

Steph says: “They’re mixing the human hair with animal fibres and animal hair and there’s some really bad stuff ... if they actually knew what was going on, girls wouldn’t wear it. It’s going to be like wearing fur eventually, that’s what’s going to happen.”