What Even Is Braiding Hair?

An (thwarted-at-every-turn) attempt to figure out what is in Kanekalon and a look at some Black-owned companies with better-for-the-scalp products.

Tthe bra-strap-length box braids I wore off and on during high school. In college, I had my braided-bob phase. Most recently, I got Tracee Ellis Ross–inspired cornrows before a trip to Hawaii. All of these styles amounted to a lot of synthetic hair being woven into mine. And I’m not alone: The global wig-and-extensions market is expected to generate $10 billion in revenue by 2023. Still, for years, I never stopped to ask, What exactly is this stuff? Any conversation about braiding hair has to begin with Kanekalon. Whether you’re at a braiding shop in Harlem or in Lagos, the word Kanekalon is universally understood. Hairstylists love it because it is easy to work with. It doesn’t get tangled, which speeds up the braiding process, and it just looks great—glossy and flowy, almost like human hair. It’s also affordable—cheaper-than-asingle-latte-at-Starbucks affordable.

Here’s what we do know about Kanekalon: It is a trademarked type of synthetic fiber produced by Kaneka, a Japanese chemical-manufacturing behemoth founded in 1949 and based in Osaka. And because it is the most significant player in the braiding-hair market, I assumed it would hold all the answers to my questions: What is in braiding hair generally? And what is in Kaneka’s braiding hair specifically? After my dozens of emails to the company went unanswered, I turned my attention to Kaneka’s North American dealings. A LinkedIn search served up 268 Kaneka employees based in New York, California, and Texas. I zeroed in on six people working in marketing, R&D, and product development. Five messages later, I received three responses. Two redirected me to other contacts in the company (who didn’t respond), and a third agreed to talk off the record. That source confirmed what I was starting to suspect: Kaneka’s secrecy is deliberate. When I began my sleuthing, I wondered if its hush-hush way of operating was intended to prevent customers from finding out something unsavory about Kanekalon, but according to this employee, it is actually more about keeping its formula protected in a fiercely competitive marketplace. (Though there is no synthetic-hair manufacturer that is even remotely as popular as Kaneka.)

Since I clearly wasn’t getting the recipe from Kaneka, I turned to Cassandra Celestin, a cosmetic chemist and trichologist. According to Celestin, the fiber is most likely made of a combination of polymers (“plastics”). Those polymers, she says, are probably synthesized with different chemicals (she can’t speculate about which ones) to deliver the flexibility and elasticity needed for those who want to whip their hair back and forth. This polymer blend is then likely fed into a spinning machine with tiny holes that produce extremely thin fibers that resemble hair once they dry and harden. “The exact formula can stay a trade secret,” she says. “It’s not like a cosmetic formula, where they have to label it according to an FDA or E.U. regulation.”

So is it safe to braid chemicals and plastics into your scalp? While that question hasn’t been answered definitively, tons of women who have worn synthetic braiding hair have reported disastrous side effects, from burning to itching to scabbing. All of the experts I spoke with have either personally experienced problems with synthetic hair or know someone who has. But in lieu of scientific studies explaining what exactly is in the faux strands that causes people’s scalps to freak out, Black women are founding their own transparent braiding-hair companies using safer-for-the-scalp ingredients.

Like Ciara Imani May, who started Rebundle in 2019. At $20 per pack, Rebundle is expensive, but it is biodegradable and compostable and it contains only banana leaf, nontoxic organic shampoo and conditioner, protein treatment, and grape-seed oil. “We have clean beauty products in almost every other category, but the option wasn’t there for braiding hair,” says May.

On the more affordable side, there is Dosso Beauty, created by Kadidja Dosso. She spent a year cold-calling and researching manufacturers to find one that would make a product that was itch free, hypoallergenic, and prewashed before shipping. Her final product is made of “a combination of PVC and acrylic resin”—plastics that are

thought to be less irritating than those used in Kanekalon—and is washed before it ships. “A lot of times, these manufacturers are not cleansing the hair. They’re just packing it up and shipping it off, which is why a lot of chemicals can linger,” Dosso says. “Customers need to ask these questions about what’s in these products so that distributors force the brands to be more knowledgeable. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t ask my manufacturer an extra question just to try to make sure I get it right.”