How wigs are made from donated hair

• Wig making is an extremely labor-intensive and time-consuming process that can take up to six months.
• Hair We Share is a nonprofit that collects hair donations and donates free wigs to people experiencing medical hair loss. In 2019, it donated 260 wigs.
• According to Dean Riskin, cofounder of Hair We Share, the cost of making a wig can be as high as $1,200. Unfortunately, when hair donations are not financially funded, they may end up in inventory until they are sponsored.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

Narrator: What you're seeing is 200,000 ponytails of human hair. Combined, that's at least 25 miles of hair.

Dean Riskin: The hair is just busting out all over the place. Too much.

Narrator: All these ponytails are donated. But not all of them will be made into wigs. In fact, many get eliminated at the beginning of the wig-making process.

Suzanne Chimera: Cannot be used. So, it's a shame that these people donated their hair and they thought that it was gonna do something nice for somebody. But it's not usable.

Narrator: So, how do they decide which ponytails to keep and which to toss? And once hair makes it through inspection, how does it go from this to this?

Cutting the hair is only the first step of the process, and perhaps the easiest. From there, workers perform over 50 hours of manual labor to transform the single ponytails into full-fledged wigs. This can take four to six months. Hair We Share is a nonprofit that provides free wigs to people with hair loss due to a medical condition.

Suzanne: So, most people, when they think hair loss, they think cancer. We're way more than that. In the last month, we've serviced a motorcycle accident, domestic violence, and two burn victims.

Narrator: Its cofounders enlist the help of 20 volunteers to sort through the abundance of donations at their New York headquarters. The donated hair is sorted into categories of color, texture, and length.

Suzanne: One more. Nope, that's brown.

Narrator: Sorters measure the hair to make sure it reaches the minimum length of eight inches. Otherwise, it can't be used.

Suzanne: The length doesn't need to be exactly the same. If it's 3, 4 inches, even 6 inches is fine, just not 2 feet and 8 inches.

Narrator: In addition to hair that's too short, a lot of other things disqualify donated hair, like hair that's highlighted, tangled, or just has unnatural colors.

Suzanne: This is a big problem. Like, this cannot be used. It cannot be used. Because the hair is not tied together in a rubber band, and it's reversed, it will tangle. So it's not usable. The post office has rollers that the mail goes through, and if it's in an envelope that's just a regular envelope, it gets torn. And the hair gets caught in the rollers. And so, unfortunately, this is beautiful blond hair, which we're always in need of, but we just can't use it. This came to us wet, so we appreciate that the person washed their hair, but it needed to be dry before they sent it to us. This is now molded, and it smells bad, and it just cannot be used. When we can't use hair, unfortunately we discard it. We have tried to find companies that will use it to clean up oil spills, and any of the companies we've contacted said that they're getting too much hair.

So, I'm gonna put one together now, OK? Yeah, so this is black. So, watch. Watch. No, yep, we can call this black.

Narrator: The hair is sorted into eight colors.

Suzanne: When I look at hair, I see 40 colors. I don't see eight hair colors. Once the hair's all mixed together, you're not gonna know if it's light brown or medium brown. And we all have more than one color in our hair, so it's perfectly fine.

Narrator: It takes six to nine ponytails to make a single wig. Those of similar color, texture, and length are packaged together and sent to Hair We Share's manufacturer. There, the ponytails go through a hackle to evenly blend the hair and remove any uneven or weak strands. During this stage, anywhere from 10% to 60% of the hair can be lost, depending on its strength and health. But what is left is smooth, blended hair.

The freshly hackled hair is then pressed into a holding card with tiny metal pins to ensure it doesn't get tangled again. Part of the hair is sewn into wefts, which are then sewn onto the sides and the back of the wig cap. The rest of the hair strands are ventilated by hand. This is what makes the wigs look realistic. Small strands of hair are pulled through the cap with a hook one by one. This is an extremely meticulous process that can take up to 10 hours per wig.

After the last strand is ventilated, the manufacturer sends the finished wig back to Hair We Share, where it is washed and styled. But not all the donated ponytails are guaranteed to make it to a manufacturer, even if they're perfectly usable.

Dean: The ponytails cost us nothing because they're shipped to us. It's all labor-intensive. Unless we have the financial donation for this year, we won't have enough money to create 3,700 wigs. Those ponytails have to sit in inventory until they're sponsored or funded.

Narrator: But for the hair that does get made into wigs, it finds a new purpose with a recipient.

Kristen Berggren: You know, I'm just excited. Excited to get the wig. Oh, it's lovely.

Hairdresser: Looks beautiful.

Kristen: It is. I can't even believe it's not my hair. I got used to being bald, but honestly, putting the wig on and having that beautiful... just this hair makes me feel a little bit like my old self. Which is a blessing.

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