Human Hair & Sheep’s Wool: A Tale of Two Textiles

Sunday, 16 February 2025 - 1:00pm
A wool sheep on display at the Melbourne Royal Show, 2018.

In today’s show, an introduction to the wool series, Betty and Trev respond to a podcast episode called ‘Wearing Hair’ from ‘Articles of Interest’ by Avery Trufelman. We discuss the concept of wearing human hair textiles as an alternative biomaterial as spearheaded by the Dutch company ‘Human Material Loop’ asking… is it vegan to wear human hair? We go on to unpack some of the inherent ethical issues with sheep’s wool as a material and critique the wool advocacy of author and knitting influencer, Clara Parkes.

 

 Music played:

 Hair – The Cowsills: https://archive.org/details/the-cowsills-hair

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 Lachlan Tigers – The Bushwackers Band (1977): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjorT4nQvs4 

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 Flash Jack from Gundagai – The Bushwackers (2020):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWJprPwyUqQ

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 Freedom of Species Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3TJQujKYjGFoFP6LhBbaTS?si=6ghUWmzkQpyv...

 

 Listen to ‘Wearing Hair’ from ‘Articles of Interest’ here:

 https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/wearing-hair

 Human Material Loop and information about human hair textiles:

 https://humanmaterialloop.com/ .

 https://zsofiakollar.com/human-material-loop/

 Other links and references:

 https://edgarsmission.org.au/animal/baarack/ .

 Kumar Kumawat, T., Sharma, A., Sharma, V., & Chandra, S. (2018). Keratin Waste: The Biodegradable Polymers. Keratin. IntechOpen. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.79502 .

 https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/population_and_sustainabili...

 

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Sunday 1:00pm to 2:00pm
Animal advocacy on the airwaves, hosted by a team of local animal advocates.

Presenter

The Freedom of Species Team

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