Wigmaker Rachel Walker spends up to 450 hours on wigs for medical hair loss

Australia Broadcast Center

4 days ago

Master wigmaker Rachel Walker can spend up to 450 hours painstakingly attaching human hair, strand by strand, to a Swiss lace base to create a single wig.
The time-consuming process has become a passion for her after seeing the impact a wig can have on the self-esteem of people experiencing medical hair loss.
Ms Walker, who has been a hairdresser for 36 years, expanded her skills to wig-making 10 years ago, when she became frustrated by the lack of options available to her clients.
She largely relies on hair donations to keep wig costs as low as possible, but her wigs still cost thousands of dollars because of the skill and time required to make them.
Even the simplest wigs can take close to 100 hours to complete.
"Sometimes I get in a real zone and can ventilate [the process of hand-tying hair strands] for five to six hours," Ms Walker said.
Other options are available for people experiencing medical hair loss, including a service by the Cancer Council, which provides free wigs for people suffering hair loss due to cancer treatment.
Ms Walker, one of just a handful of human-hair wigmakers in Australia, was inspired to learn the skill when she realised the range of wigs available to her clients did not reflect their identities before they started losing their hair for medical reasons.
Seeing no training opportunities in Australia at the time, she relocated to New York, where she studied under two master wigmakers.
"I've been going strong ever since," she said.
Sitting surrounded by boxes of hair in her home studio in southern Tasmania, Ms Walker said the only downside was finding strands of hair everywhere.
"I have hair in my food, I have hair in my washing, I have hair in my hair — my house is full of hair," she said before laughing.
Today, she is working on a topper, a piece made to blend with a client's existing hair.
Looking through a magnifying glass, she skilfully adds a single strand of hair to the lace.
This topper will take an estimated 98 hours to complete.
The clock starts ticking before Ms Walker even picks up the Swiss lace, as she must first match donated hair to her client's existing or lost hair in density, texture and colour, if maintaining their former look is what they desire.
For clients who had, or still have, the beginnings of white or grey hair, Ms Walker individually selects grey or white strands from her compendium of hair.
She said silver and white hair was the most difficult to source because people with those hair types generally wear their hair short or colour it.
Ms Walker receives "bunches of packages" of donated hair from all over Australia and New Zealand.
A recent donation of a brown ponytail of hair was cut 37 years ago and kept by a parent, who was willing to part with their daughter's hair in the hope that it could help someone else.
The donation arrived with its 1980s plastic, hair-bobble ties still intact.
"For somebody to donate it and to willingly cut off that adornment … to share what they have and to give [it] out of the loveliness and generosity of their own heart … it's just beautiful," she said.
Barb Jeffery of Western Australia bought one of Ms Walker's toppers after years of living with extensive scarring alopecia, a permanent type of hair loss.
She and her friends call her topper Moira, after a character from the television show Schitt's Creek who has a wig for all occasions.
Ms Jeffery says Moira is a celebrated member of her family and community, and is "known about town by lots of people … she has a personality".
"I've noticed a huge difference. When I'm out with my normal hair, people will say hello and immediately look at the top of my head," Ms Jeffery said.
"That used to upset me. I didn't want to be in family photographs — now I take a photo any time I have Moira.
"It makes you feel good again."
Ms Jeffery said wearing the topper for the first time was overwhelming for everyone.
When unable to meet a client's needs through local donations, Ms Walker buys ethically harvested hair, but said she was facing difficulty in accessing ethical hair because of the war in Ukraine, where her supplier was based.
Anthropologist Assa Doron, of the Australian National University, has spent more than a decade exploring the global trade of human hair as part of a larger project on waste.
He said the trade was built on the exploitation of labour, primarily in the Global South, and was largely unregulated because of its "fragmented" and "informal" nature.
In 2013, Professor Doron travelled to India, where he observed waste pickers, people who collect refuse from gutters, collecting hair in unsafe conditions and with minimal protection.
He also traced the supply route of temple hair, which is cut by religious pilgrims as a sign of devotion but then collected and sold for profit, in his co-authored book Waste of a Nation.
Professor Doron said there was no standardised certification, like the Fair Trade certification, that verified ethically sourced hair.
Until such mechanisms existed for hair, ethical sourcing would remain difficult, and conditions would not improve for "the most vulnerable in this trade".
Ms Walker said she refused to buy hair from temple hair sources and had a stance against unethically sourced hair.
Free wigs are among options for those experiencing medical hair loss.
The Cancer Council offers access to a wide range of synthetic wigs and turbans for free to anyone who has lost their hair due to cancer treatment.
Claire Prior, the council's Tasmanian director of supportive care, said the wigs could be tailored to suit a client's face.
The Cancer Council accepts donated wigs, and other organisations, such as Sustainable Salons — who sort and send hair to wigmakers and charities across Australia — accept donations of plaited natural or coloured hair ponytails of 20 centimetres or longer.
The Australia Alopecia Areata Foundation offers wig advice online for children and adults living with alopecia.
"You don't have to donate to me … you can donate to any wig-making charity that supports people who have medical hair loss," Ms Walker said.