It’s never a fun job removing dead hair from your shower’s drain. But it’s a necessary weekly ritual for anyone with longer locks. What you don’t ever expect is the same gross mass to be turned into a giant hairball, tumbling through the streets of New York City to make a rather in-your-face point about hair loss.
Dubbed ‘the Tumblehair’, the rolling installation is 10ft tall and made of real human hair. Yuck. It’s supposed to represent the 167 billion hairs New Yorkers lose to shedding. And it’s been created to mark the launch of Future IQ, the latest “hair longevity” serum from biotech haircare brand K18. The product is “clinically proven to help retain up to 19,000 more hairs, visibly reduce greys and improve scalp barrier function after 90 days”. (This was calculated based on the population of NYC multiplied by the number of hairs Future IQ can save on one person, apparently.)
Created by Uncommon Creative Studio, the giant hairball has rolled across iconic New York City neighbourhoods including Midtown, the West Village, Chinatown and the Seaport. It will make its final public appearance at Gansevoort Plaza tomorrow (12 August), where people can experience the installation first-hand, get a bespoke scalp analysis, and learn more about K18 and Future IQ.
In a city where locals have probably seen it all, hats off to Uncommon for doing something utterly bonkers and memorable – both making a point and promoting a client, but also creating something people can’t resist photographing and sharing on their socials.
“The Tumblehair is what happens when you refuse to talk about hair loss the way the industry always has – quietly and apologetically,” say Lauren Cooper and Cara Johnson, both creative directors at Uncommon.
“We wanted to flip the script and encourage a conversation about a topic people tend to shy away from, despite many of us experiencing this at some point in our lives. The Tumblehair takes something that 80 million Americans are dealing with, and makes it impossible to ignore. It’s an absurd visual, but that’s exactly the point.”
All we want to know is how they make it move. And where they got the hair from in the first place. And what they plan to do with the giant hairball once the stunt’s over. To be honest, I think we should remain clueless. My stomach will be glad of the mystery.
