By TAMARA KAMINSKY, Daily Mail

Last updated at 09:15 31 July 2006

Hair harvested from Indian virgins in sacred temples is the latest must-have adornment. But who are the real fashion victims?investigates:

When Victoria Beckham pushed her long glossy fingernails through her hair last month during the World Cup, attention was momentarily taken away from her ever shrinking frame and on to her scalp. For under those thick tresses, it seemed, the commander-in-chief of the WAGs crowd was going bald.

Was this alopecia? Was the stress of the upcoming games getting to her? As it turns out, it was simply a hair malfunction. For Mrs Beckham had not had time to replace her hair extensions.

Having learned not to let her standards slip while the world was watching, she flew back to the UK and, five hours later, she strolled down the street in a push-up bra and with £2,000 worth of imported human hair bouncing up and down on her shoulders. Naturally, Colleen followed suit.

For the queen of grooming, hair is all. So panicky was Posh that her locks would look less than luscious on her 'secret' post-World Cup holiday, aboard designer Roberto Cavalli's yacht with husband David Beckham, that she flew her hairdresser out for the duration of the trip.

But beauty comes at a price. In the time it takes for a footballer's wife to have human hair extensions added to her own scalp, across the globe in Northern India, thousands of women will be divesting themselves of their crowning glory.

They wait patiently in line on the cold stone floor of a temple in India to have their hair shaved off with a dry razor, leaving them completely bald.

Within a matter of weeks, their luscious locks will have been bleached, or 'high-lifted' using ammoniated mercury, and then bonded on to the heads of rich Western women who want to imitate the latest red carpet fashion for wavy tresses. In fact, at a minimum of £500 in exclusive salons all over the UK, you, too, can have real human hair bonded on to your own, thickening or lengthening it instantly.

'Temple hair' is hugely popular with A-listers, such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Aniston, J-Lo, Kate Beckinsale, and even John Galliano. But while top hair salons enjoy the profits made from selling human hair, does anyone dare to ask where it comes from, or how much women abroad are being paid to donate their locks to fashion?

The shocking truth is that not a penny is awarded to the women at the Indian temple who sacrifice their hair. In fact, they are not even told that it is soon to be sold for profit. All the money goes to the temple itself.

Perched on the hills of Tirupati, in India, the Hindu temple is the second richest religious site in the world after Vatican City. Boasting up to 20 million pilgrims a year, the popular site costs $120 million a year to maintain. Money mainly comes from donations. The most prevalent source, however, is from the sale of human hair.

Every day, up to 4,000 women visit the temple to take part in this religious ceremony, called tonsuring, in which they shave off their hair as a sacrifice to the god Vishnu. In particular, virgins before their wedding happily take part in this tradition, which is a sign that they are willing to give up their pride and vanity, and to thank the gods or ask them for health and happiness in the future.

So how does their humble sacrifice wind up draped over the shoulders of the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow?

Lakshmi Srinivasan, a beautiful 21-year-old girl, lives in Chennai, close to the temple. From the tender age of 11, she sat on the floor of a factory, sorting hair to export to the US.

"I worked for one of the distributors of the hair who would buy the cuts from the temple, then sort it, dye it and package it for the luxury market", she says.

She began in the combing room, where bins of hair cut from the heads of devout women would be taken through and placed on to the floor. Lakshmi's nimble fingers would then comb through the hair, taking out knots and sorting it into lengths.

"It doesn't matter if it is from the same head, although that does help," she says. Even more than the back-breaking hours on the job, Lakshmi remembers the overpowering stench of the hair.

"Indian women rub oils into their hair to keep it soft and beautiful. After a while in storage, it starts to stink. But it is these oils and the care Indian women take of their hair which leaves it in such good condition. Also, they grow it very long. Our hair is a major source of pride and beauty."

Lakshmi, coming from a poor family, needed to work to feed her parents, as well as to save for a dowry so she could marry. But she had to make far greater sacrifices for their prosperity.

"When I was younger, I was made to have my own hair cut off at the temple," she remembers.

"It shamed me. I had to go back to school completely bald. But my parents believed that it would bring us some luck, so I could not say no."

Many poor families go to the temple to pray for good crops; for poor farmers, the sacrifice of hair to Vishnu adds to their chances of having a good harvest. The temple, of course, also benefits.

Lakshmi says: "We are encouraged to give donations to the temple, but some women are too poor. Their hair is all they have."

The tonsuring process Lakshmi remembers is designed to make sure that the hair is kept in perfect condition for selling. The head is bowed forward and a dry razor blade is used to take the hair off at the roots, all at once.

"No creams are used, no scissors - it all comes off in one go. That way, it is long and fresh for the factories," she recalls.

'Sores on the scalp'

"It is uncomfortable and itchy, because of this, and you can get sores on your scalp. But they have a lot of people to go through," she shrugs. "Thousands come every day to make their sacrifice."

When the hair extension craze exploded five years ago, Indian hair was already popular. It is very fine, but strong and durable as well as rich in pigment and easy to treat.

When the wasted tresses which covered the floors of the temple were brushed up, it amounted to tonnes of hair every year. As most Hindu women never cut their hair, the locks are long. Perfect for those trips down the red carpet thousands of miles away.

And in LA, where looks are everything, women will pay premium prices to get their hands on these virgin locks.

LA's hottest shopping street, Melrose Avenue, is teeming with skinny blondes in designer clothes. And among the top boutiques lies the one-stop shop for every starlet's most vital accessory: hair.

Vered Hair Salon is not just another exclusive hair and nail spa; this is where everybody who is anybody buys their luscious locks. Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie are huge fans, not to mention Playboy bunnies who pout seductively from framed photos on the wall of the salon.

The idea of 'temple hair', with all it's spiritual connotations, has a special appeal in the city where religious fads are considered part and parcel of celebrity.

"We do have every colour," explains the owner, Vered, "but this is LA, so obviously blonde is the most popular. And the blonder it is, the faster it sells.

"Most of the hair, obviously, is used by people who want to be beautiful, plus spirituality is very 'in' over here, so that kind of adds to the whole experience of getting temple hair."

And where America leads, Britain is quick to follow. "Indian hair really is the best quality, I find," says a spokesman for Tyrone and Company, a London salon. "It can be treated just like your own hair, it can be heated and curled, coloured and blow-dried, unlike acrylic."

The look is also far more expensive. "If you look at Chantelle, her hair is acrylic. Compare it with the real thing, say, on Paris Hilton. You can see the difference."

There are now more than 50 salons in London alone which deal in Indian temple hair, and business is booming. But as with anything in fashion, knockoff merchants are waiting in the wings to provide a cheaper version for the masses who want to copy them.

Just like fake Fendi or Chloe bags, temple hair merchants have to fight a flurry of Indian hair suppliers desperate to break into the market for hair extensions. Now, up to 80 out of every 100 locks of human hair comes from this black market.

Shri E.V.K.S. Elangovan, an Indian trade minister, worries about the popularity of Indian human hair. "Aside from the temple hair, we have no idea where the rest comes from," he says. "In many cases we fear women are being exploited. There are no specific restrictions on the import and export of human hair. This is obviously an environment that breeds illegality."

Preying on desperately poor women in Indian villages, these suppliers cajole them into selling their hair for next to nothing. The cost of a set of hair extensions in the West is enough to feed a family in India for six months. It is the salons and the hair distributors, however, who recover the profits.

With the black market in human hair becoming more prolific as human sources are being found across Europe and China, too, is it ever possible to have luxury human hair extensions put in without having to worry about where they came from?

Connect Hair Systems, which provides Victoria Beckham with her designer locks, claims that its business is a purely ethical one. "We make sure that our benefactors are giving their hair through choice," says the salon.

But with hair extensions in such hot demand, there would need to be a lot of women who are willing to sell their crowning glory to complete strangers - for profit or for free.

How can you ever be really sure that neither poverty nor desperation is a factor? After all, how much would someone have to pay you to donate your hair to Victoria Beckham?