IS THAT BRAZILIAN HAIR REALLY FROM BRAZIL?

Hair comes into Chinese factories  by the bag full. The hair is then disinfected in large vats and is died different colors, and dried in ovens.

After that is complete, women workers braid the hair into wigs and hair extensions, so that they are more fitting to sell.The hair market in China peaked at $90 million dollars last year, making it a trade that is quite lucrative worldwide.

Over 400 companies processing human hair can be found in Taihe, in the eastern province of Anhui.
 Prices for human hair, which usually comes from Chinese locals themselves, can fetch as much $880 per kilogram. The biggest export markets for the finished wigs are in Europe, Africa, and the Unites States.


They bring Chinese hair. They call it Indian hair because it is an easier way to sell it. They have different names for it. Whenever they exhaust one name they tag on another name. So,  they have Brazilian hair, they have Peruvian hair, Indonesian hair, they have Malaysian hair, Italian and French too.

It is   very, very unlikely that your Brazilian hair is from Braail because  Brazil actually imports from India directly. According to human hair dealer, Vince Selva

The only place in the world that has commercial quantities of hair is from one billion people in India, and they, as a ritual, donate it to the temple.”

 Hindu pilgrims have donated their hair in a ritual of purification for centuries. It’s a symbol of religious devotion and surrender of the ego…that has also turned into an extraordinary economic resource.

“The temple realizes, ‘Oh, there is a lot of money in this,’ and they started doing contracts with people. It started way back,” Selva explained. “You bid, the companies with other bidders, and you get the contract for a year or a season. And then all the hair that comes to you in that time belongs to you.”

He went on to explain that most “curly virgin hair” is a myth. “I know because we use their permed hair for closures. They will ask, ‘Do you want a two centimeter curl or one centimeter?’ So every bundle of hair is exactly the same.” (If you are purchasing hair with defined, identical curls, like pictured below, know that it is permed and not virgin as advertised.)

Another big scheme comes from online stores, who often sell Chinese hair because it’s easily available. “Indians sell Chinese hair, too. They learned that it’s cheaper to have a website in Indian and sell the cheaper hair which they bought from the Chinese and export it back to the United States.

So people here think, ‘Oh that’s Indian hair because it’s from India. Not real,” Selva pointed out. “When you have a website you are anonymous, no one knows you so you start shipping and after time someone says that website is bad. So they shut it down and start another name and ship it again.”





Keep the conversation going, please drop a comment.

 Be Sociable, Please share