As fashion looks to become more , we’ve seen a whole assortment of hit the market, from mushroom leather to seaweed yarns and everything in between. One potential fabric of the future that may surprise you? Human hair. Royal College of Art student became interested in using human hair in their work, after noticing its similarities with the wool from long-haired sheep in their native Norway.
“Our neighbour is a farmer, and has tonnes of bags of wool – I asked if I could use some of it,” the designer tells . “I wanted to use this specific wool, because [it] looks like human hair. I came back to the UK, and my tutor was like, ‘Why don’t you use [actual] human hair, because it looks so similar?’” While the likes of have incorporated human hair into their work in the past (see looks 26 and 27 from the designer’s ), Decap’s approach differs in that they treat it pretty much like any other fibre.
The MA student asked a London salon if they could use its hair waste, which would typically just be thrown away. They then began treating it, cleaning it with conditioner (“because a lot of the hair that I’ve gotten is already treated or has been bleached, so it’s really dry”), and straightening it. After that, they combined the human hair with the Norwegian wool by needle-felting the fibres together (which involves using special needles to stab the fibres repeatedly, until they become a firmer felt), before dyeing it with semi-permanent and permanent dy.
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