Taiwanese woman creates shoes and accessories from hair

Taiwanese hairdresser Tsai Shiou-ying has won many prizes for her cutting and decorative hair extensions in a four-decade career. Now she has gone one step further, turning the hair left on the salon floor after haircuts into decorations including shoes, brooches, fruit and animals.



Tsai, 54, who started working with hair in her teens and learned the skills of styling from her mother, recently showed off some of her creations in her small salon in Greater Taichung. Her pride and joy is a pair of high heels made entirely from human hair. A single heel needs hair from at least three people, and she asks her neighbours and relatives to contribute to her stock. It takes a month to make a single pair of hairy heels.

To develop her hobby further, Tsai is now planning a range of hairy corsets and dresses. But her works, which also include elaborate flower-shaped brooches in purples and greens, a life-size pineapple and a black rat with bright blue eyes, are not for sale.


YouTube link.

Asked if she was worried that some people might think her hobby is in rather bad taste, Tsai said there was nothing to fear from hair. “All the hair was cut off on-site, and even if it was given by my friends, it would be just cut off from someone, so this won’t have anything to do with taboos about dead people’s hair. Some people watch too many horror movies, so they imagine paranormal events and become afraid,” she said.