Publicity:

It’s the ‘must have’ fashion accessory for women the world over.

Hair extensions don’t just adorn super models and the likes of Paris Hilton. They’ve become an expensive add on for any woman seeking extra body and length.

But whose hair is it, and where does it come from?

Foreign Correspondent follows the hair trail from the temples of India to the salons of Europe, and reveals that a spiritual ritual practised by millions has enabled fortunes to be made in the decadent west.

Each day in the temples of southern India, tens of thousands of Hindu pilgrims have their heads shaved as an act of humility. What most of the worshippers don’t know is that the hair is collected and sold by temple management, in the first step on the journey to another woman’s head.

Tracy Bowden follows the hair trail from India to Rome, where she meets the flamboyant and very wealthy self-proclaimed founder of the global hair extension industry, David A Gold.

 “Hair as a commodity should be quoted and is up there with gold and silver and platinum. This market is gigantic, beyond comprehension.” David A Gold

But there are questions of morality and ethics.  Bowden talks to British pop star Jamelia, who was troubled about the source of her hair extensions, and embarked upon her own journey to India to search for the truth.

The story is an eye opener - a fascinating tale of how an ancient religious practice is fuelling a global fashion phenomenon.

Miss India salon montage

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00:00

BOWDEN: At a salubrious hair salon in Bangalore, stylist to the stars Prasad Bidappa is trying to shape and fashion the next Miss India.

00:12

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00:22

BOWDEN:  Like most women here these beauty queens have one thing in common, long lustrous hair. It’s an asset they treasure, nurture and keep in its original state – straight, uncoloured, untampered with.

PRASAD BIDAPPA: I think that for many women

00:42

Prasad. Super:
Prasad Bidappa
Fashion Guru

the hair is really the crowning glory, you know? It’s an intrinsic part of your look and we talk about having a bad hair day,

00::59

Women show off hair to camera

so you can imagine how great it is when you have a good hair day. So I think it’s really important.

01:06

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01:10

BOWDEN: These women need to maintain their hair to get where they want to go, but millions of other Indians believe sacrificing their hair is the path to happiness.

01:15

Temple of Kanipakam

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01:32

BOWDEN: At the temple of Kanipakam in southern India, the Hindu faithful have come to venerate the God Ganesh.

01:54

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02:00

BOWDEN:  They’ve travelled for days to queue for hours in the hope that their prayers will be answered. In their pursuit of good fortune, many will make a very personal offering.

02:09

Boy with shaved head/ Hair on ground/Snake charmer/ Beggar/ Elephant

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02:20

Jayanti, sister and husband at temple

BOWDEN:   Jayanti, her husband and her sister are just three among the thousands making the pilgrimage today.

02:36

JAYANTI: About five years ago I was unwell, and I made a vow - so I have come here to fulfil the vow.

02:49

BOWDEN: Jayanti is honouring a promise to the God she believes healed her. She hasn’t anything more valuable to offer than her hair.

02:57

JAYANTI: It’s no big deal so I can’t think about whether it’s beautiful or ugly. It’s an offering to God, and therefore I have to go through with it.

03:05

Tonsuring. Children having heads shaved

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03:19

BOWDEN: This is called tonsuring, and every year millions of Hindu pilgrims shave their heads out of humility and in gratitude to the gods.

03:34

Temple barbers

The barbers are kept busy 24 hours a day, with dozens to a room. They remove hair from the willing and some too young to understand.

03:49

Jayanti and husband. Jayanti sits to have hair cut off

Jayanti knows what she’s doing but she has no idea what will become of her hair – she’s not thinking about it.

04:03

Jayanti having hair shorn

JAYANTI: We don’t know about that. We have offered it to God. What happens to it we don’t know.

04:11

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04:21

BOWDEN: On this day, the process is being replicated at hundreds of temples across southern India.

04:27

Hair being hung out to dry

With each hour the pile of hair drying in the sun outside the temple grows. Thousands of heads will be shaved, tonnes of hair will be gathered.

04:33

Jayanti stands, head shorn

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04:44

Jayanti, sister and husband

JAYANTI: A woman is beautiful with hair and after offering the hair to God she’s still beautiful.

04:52

Women collects hair and puts in to sacks

BOWDEN: Twenty years ago the hair gathered by temples was used to stuff mattresses. Now tonsuring centre managers like Selvan, pack it and dispatch it to a chain of middle men.

05:00

SELVAN: Daily we dry it,

05:17

Selvan

pack it and keep it inside. The owner comes once a week and takes it.

05:20

Selvan packs hair

BOWDEN: Each temple has a contract to sell hair to a particular company, or auctions it to the highest bidder.

05:26

Men bathing at temple after being tonsured

By law the temples are supposed to pour the money back into welfare programmes for the pilgrims, but exactly how much and precisely where is impossible to gauge.

05:37

Bangalore hair factory

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05:52

Women working in hair factory/Mayoor on phone

We can tell you though that at the next stop of the hair trail, the value has already exploded. In a factory on the outskirts of Bangalore, hair dealer Mayoor Balsara is finalising his latest purchase from the temples.

06:02

MAYOOR BALSARA: (ON PHONE) They’ve booked seven or eight bags in the train, so I wanted to know is Baresh free with the truck

06:17

to go over and pick them up? It’s almost like 600, 700 kilos of hair.

06:24

Women processing hair

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06:28

Mayoor on phone

BOWDEN: Mayoor Balsara sources his stock from up to twenty temples across southern India. Raised in the UK, he’s returned to his family’s homeland to the ground floor of a rapidly expanding industry.

06:35

Mayoor with Bowden in factory

MAYOOR BALSARA: On average say in a month, we are getting about in excess of five tonnes. This is just one example of, you know, how the hair comes. So it comes in these gunny bags. We just drop them here, then we log it in, we weigh it and we do the initial inspection before we put it into the initial stages of production. On average we would pay

06:51

approximately -- for a kilo -- $250 to $300 US dollars, that’s an average price. Depending upon the quality and the lengths etcetera it can be more.

07:17

Factory workers combing hair/ Mayoor shows Bowden

BOWDEN: There is no machinery on this factory floor, the work is all done by hand. The hair is washed, combed and sorted into various lengths.

07:27

MAYOOR BALSARA: We’ve been drawing out the longer lengths, and now as you can see, we are progressing towards the shorter lengths.

07:42

 Mayoor

The demand for really good quality and super quality, fine quality hair is always there. And it’s always growing.

07:48

Tilt up Mayoor holding long length of hair

BOWDEN: The long lengths of hair are the most valuable. In the coming months these high quality locks will continue their journey west, destined for high fashion and glamour.

DAVID: They’ve all gone

07:6

Mayoor on conference call to David

absolutely nuts, the orders are coming in three times faster than we can possibly ship them out.

08:11

Rome

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08:19

BOWDEN: From the temples, through the middlemen, the next stop for the best of the best locks is Rome.

08:25

Mayoor on conference call to David

Bangalore hair buyer, Mayoor Balsara is on a conference call to a man in Italy who can’t get enough of his hair.

08:34

David

DAVID A GOLD: Basically you are guaranteeing that within the next three months you are going to send the minimum, a minimum of 8 to 10 possibly even 12 tonnes okay?

08:46

David on factory floor with hair

[to reporter] This hair is unprocessed, virgin hair.

BOWDEN: David A Gold is widely regarded as the founder of the hair extension industry.

DAVID A GOLD: We treat hair as if it were cashmere wool.

BOWDEN: He’s of British and Italian heritage and his company,

08:59

Hair extensions

Great Lengths, supplies top of the range hair extensions to thousands of salons in more than fifty countries.

DAVID A GOLD: This market is gigantic,

09:15

David. Super:
David A. Gold
Founder, Great Lengths

beyond comprehension. We are talking about billions and billions of dollars of turnover yearly in this extension field.

09:25

David shows hair

Now here’s some hair that has taken 12 maybe even 15 years to grow to this length. Very, very expensive. I mean a kilo of hair this length would be easily $2,500 and this is probably about half a kilo. We can measure this, we can weigh this. Yep, 536 grams. So that’s worth about $1,200 just what’s sitting on here, without any of the labour, anything involved yet.

09:34

Dying hair

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10:10

Bleaching and colouring hair

BOWDEN: Air freighted from Bangalore, the shiny black hair has the pigment removed and turns blonde. Then it’s dyed any one of more than 50 shades in the next step along the path back to the human head.

10:16

Jugs of dye

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10:31

David

DAVID A GOLD: Hair is almost as valuable if you look at it as a commodity,

10:34

Processing hair

it should be quoted and is up there with gold and silver and platinum without a doubt, because obviously the demand is far greater than the supply.

10:38

Coloured hair extensions

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10:49

BOWDEN: The workers here are paid much more than their counterparts in India. This is a high tech operation, which adds much cost to the end product.

10:55

David

DAVID A GOLD: We have discovered an amazing pent up demand. Not just for people who want to look good or copy the celebrities, who go from short hair to long hair in a day, but basically it’s a huge market out there, your average every day woman, housewife who just needs more hair or just a new expression just to feel good about themselves.

11:06

London/London salons

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11:30

Woman having hair extensions applied in salon

BOWDEN: In an upmarket salon in Central London, the hair has finally completed its journey from Hindu temple to High Street. This demonstration organised by the Great Lengths company would normally cost a client the equivalent of four thousand dollars.

11:41

SALON HAIRDRESSER: Well I soften the bond using heat, which is with the gun here, and then it’s easy to mould into place.

BOWDEN: The new strands are painstakingly attached, concealed under the top layers of hair. It’s a procedure, which will take hours, but the look should last for several months.

12:06

SALON HAIRDRESSER: You might come back after three months, I will use a special removal gel and we just comb them out basically. It is just very, very straightforward, very simple. It will take about one hour to remove the full set.

12:26

BOWDEN: And so a religious offering in India becomes an expensive accessory in the world’s fashion capitals. It’s a classic globalisation story, cheaply sourced in the developing world, this sacrificial Hindu hair

12:40

Bowden with David in his home

is making plenty of people outside of India very rich indeed. Great Lengths founder David Gold is one of them. He’s pioneered an industry, which didn’t exist 20 years ago, and each year his company turns over $150 million dollars, but his market share is only about 4% of the global trade.

12:55

DAVID A GOLD: The house that hair built? Yes I guess you can say the house that hair built, yeah.

13:21

David interview. Super:
David A. Gold
Founder, Great Lengths

BOWDEN: Are you comfortable that the women themselves aren’t being exploited, because they do have something of value. Should they be compensated for the fact that they’re giving something that ends up…

DAVID A GOLD: They wouldn’t want money. They wouldn’t want money categorically.

13:28

Hair extensions

BOWDEN: Do you know that?

DAVID A GOLD: The women who give their hair up at the temple as a form of sacrifice,

13:41

David interview

would, if it were a money question, actually give that hair to the people going around the villages.

13:48

Sunset over town

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13:56

Town streets

BOWDEN: The world wide demand has made hair a commodity in the most deprived corners of India where a street trade is developing.

14:11

Murigan and fellow rag pickers collecting hair

14:22

Murigan and his brothers are called rag pickers. They do the rounds, handing out decorated hair clips in exchange for whatever strands the village women have collected from their brushes and combs.

14:27

Murigan

MURIGAN: If we gather this and save the money it’s just enough to keep us going.

14:50

Murigan with balls of hair

BOWDEN: These so-called untouchables have become door to door hair traders, though this hair won’t make the salons of Europe, more likely the cheaper factories in China.

14:58

MURIGAN: Whoever collects hair from us takes it to Chennai. From there we believe it goes a long distance away.

15:09

Hair dealer in shop with bag of hair

BOWDEN: This is a country where 320 million people live on less than a dollar a day. Murigan and his fellow rag pickers can expect the equivalent of about 12 dollars a kilo for this lower grade hair, but it takes them almost a month to collect that amount.

15:18

Jamelia clip

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15:36

JAMELIA: In the entertainment and fashion industry hair extensions are everywhere.

15:45

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15:50

JAMELIA:  I honestly can say I don’t know of one person that I’ve come across

15:53

Jamelia

as a performer, as a model, who has not had hair extensions in their hair.

15:57

Jamelia clip

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16:02

BOWDEN: British pop star, actor and model Jamelia, was swept up in the early days of the hair extension craze. Back then she had no idea where her new hair came from.

16:09

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16:21

JAMELIA: I didn’t care. I absolutely didn’t care. It gave me the look that I wanted, it

6:23

Jamelia. Super
Jamelia
Entertainer

gave me the confidence that I wanted. Yeah, it was, I actually didn’t care, I didn’t care.

16:28

Return to temple barbers

BOWDEN: But when a British documentary crew took Jamelia to India to trace her new hair, her attitude changed.

JAMELIA: It was a particular little girl, she was the same age as my daughter at the time.

16:37

Jamelia

She was two, and she came in, absolutely gorgeous. She had little pigtails, really long and she had no idea what was about to happen.

15:54

Temple barber tonsures child

What I saw that day just changed my life.

17:02

Jamelia

If anything, I would say  the experience has taught me to actually appreciate the hair.

17:10

Jamelia clip

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17:15

BOWDEN: Jamelia claims she’s now more conscious of the origins of hair extensions but wants to see a more transparent supply chain that ensures women and children are not exploited. She’s appealing to women to think carefully about where their fabulous new head of hair came from.

17:20

JAMELIA: As long as the hair reaches to me in an ethical fashion, if I can follow it all the way back and see that

17:43

Jamelia. Super:
Jamelia
Entertainer

no one was harmed, no one was treated in a bad way or exploited, I feel that I would be okay wearing extensions in the future.

17:48

India/ Temple barbers

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17:59

BOWDEN: Those who profit from this industry say the business is ethical because temples, which sell the hair, pour money back into their community. They say the women give their hair willingly, but the pilgrims don’t know where it goes, nor do they know that the value of their hair increases hundreds of times as it’s traded along the hair trail.

18:08

Bowden with Jayanti and family. Bowden shows photos

Jayanti, the woman we met at the temple, is happy that she’s well and she’s been able to show her gratitude to the Gods. I showed her and her family some photographs of women with so called ‘temple hair’ from the Great Lengths website.

18:33

JAYANTI: It’s very beautiful… it looks great.

HUSBAND: Very beautiful… super…super.

18:51

JAYANTI: We gave it to God… it’s come back like this. It’s beautiful.

19:00

HUSBAND: For us, hair is not important – for us, God is important. We have prayed to God the hair will come back.

19:07

Montage of hair shaving, collecting, factor, extensions

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19:17

BOWDEN: An ancient religious practice is fuelling a new global phenomenon. A sacrifice for some is allowing others a world away to indulge in their vanities. The hair extension industry calls it a win-win situation, but clearly there are some who benefit more than others.

19-28

David’s helicopter

DAVID A GOLD: There’s a whole new world out there and we can really and truly say

19:58

that thanks to hair extensions, we have kept millions of people at work whom otherwise would have had to have gone off and looked for other jobs because of the way the industry is hurting. When I started this business in 1991, everyone thought I was absolutely crazy, everyone was trying to dissuade me from getting into this business, thinking it just could not be the potential, which we have discovered in the meantime for it to be out there.

20:02

David in chopper

[In his helicopter] Well I’ve been flying now for 20 years. Flying a chopper about 8 years, 9 years. I’ve done about 2,600 hours. I’m always up in this thing. I love it!

20:33

Girl looks at camera

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20:43

Credits

Reporter: Tracy Bowden

Camera:   Wayne McAllister

                   Sam Ingram

Research: Simi Chakrabarti

Editor:       Garth Thomas

Producer: Trevor Bormann

20:50