The Hair Industry's Dark Side

Guest: Dan Choi, Founder and Owner of Remy New York Human hair is a billion-dollar industry globally – and we’re not talking about styling or coloring it. We’re just talking about the buying and selling of hair itself. When a Hollywood star suddenly grows luxurious long locks overnight, it’s thanks to extensions made of real human hair cut off someone else’s head. The trouble is that even the fanciest salons don’t really know where the extensions and wigs they’re using have come from. There’s a whole range of unethical sourcing practices behind the hair trade that includes collecting hair from barbershop floors and taking advantage of desperately poor women in Asia and India. Entrepreneur Dan Choi started a company in 2017 to try and develop a fair trade standard for hair. It’s called Remy New York and he commonly pays women five or ten times what a typical hair trader would for their pony tail.