For the past few nights, I’ve been lying awake next to my sleeping wife, clutching a pair of scissors. Tomorrow is the day the nation’s 43,000 hair and beauty salons will open again and Harriet is booked to have her Rapunzel mane shorn. Such a waste, I’ve explained.
That hair, a quick internet search reveals, could be worth a lot of money. Let me cut it and sell it. But for some selfish reason, she refuses and so here I am, in bed with the scissors, trying to pluck up the courage to do it myself.
Banbury Postiche, which has been supplying wigs to the follicly challenged since the 1920s, reports a 30 per cent increase in human hair-buying over the past year.
Bloomsbury of London, purveyor of wigs and extensions, has also experienced a bountiful hair harvest over lockdown. In a year when we’ve all been tearing our hair out, here, then, is something profitable to do with it.
There are conditions, however. Bloomsbury will not buy any old hair and they can only give me a firm price once I’ve sent it to them “to see and feel”.
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“Length is key,” explains Jenny Salisbury, senior wig technician. “We only accept hair that’s 12 inches or longer. Any less and it won’t be enough for us to make a hairpiece.” For a common-or-garden foot-long ponytail, I can expect £30, which is not worth the huge argument. But if it’s longer — 16 inches and up — “it’s normally a lot more money”.
To get the top prices, north of £100, I would need to be married to a blonde, which I am not. Harriet has light brown hair (don’t say mousey) with some grey (don’t say grey). Light brown is worth more than dark brown or black but the grey, despite being on trend, is a problem.
“Often with grey hair, we find that it is quite damaged,” says Salisbury, a little hurtfully. “It’s rare to find good-quality grey hair. It can’t be coloured — if you’ve had highlights in the past and grown those out then, unfortunately, we aren’t able to accept those. We want virgin, luxury hair.”
Banbury Postiche requires European hair with a minimum length of 14 inches, says its sales director, Nick Allen. And grey hair is not necessarily a deal-breaker. “The hair has to be one colour,” he says. “Either natural or professionally coloured.”
If I can squirrel a mere 200 grams of hair from my sleeping wife in 18in lengths and discard the (very occasional) grey ones, that’s £100. Not to be snipped at. The trouble is that after some further nocturnal activity with a tape measure, I can confirm her hair is exactly 18 inches long. To get the big bucks, I’d need to give her the full Sinead O’Connor.
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“Don’t,” Allen warns, “just cut all your hair off because you think you can sell it. It will only be assessed and priced once it has been sent in.”
Hair grows at an average rate of six to eight inches a year, slower if you’ve got behind on your vitamin D. I’m putting the scissors away, but if you’re reading this through a thick, knee-length curtain of goldilocks that you can’t wait to get trimmed, think twice before your appointment tomorrow. Bobs are all the rage this season.