Historic breakthrough is a huge success for LPT

The Little Princess Trust is delighted to announce that it can now use Afro hair donations in its wigs after trials resulted in a breakthrough success.

The Little Princess Trust has always offered Afro style wigs to its young recipients using straight hair which was later curled into the requested style.

But, for many years, the charity was unable to find a wig manufacturer able to use hair donations from black and mixed race people in wigs.

However, the combined efforts of young hair donor Carly Gorton, our ambassador Cynthia Stroud and the incredible stylists at Raoul Wigmakers in London mean a breakthrough has been made.

The wigs pictured have been made by the professional team at Raouls using donations sent to LPT by supporters with Afro hair.

The shorter wig was hand knotted while the longer one was made using a mixture of wefts and knotting in the lace at the top of the wig cap.

These new wigs, the first made in the trials, mean The Little Princess Trust can now gladly accept Afro hair from our supporters with the confidence that these donations will be used in wigs.  

Phil Brace, from The Little Princess Trust, said everyone at the charity was delighted to see the first wigs made from Afro hair donations.

“We have always had a desire to accept donations from all of our supporters, but we were told that Afro hair was too delicate to be used in our wigs,” he said.

“This meant that we could not accept Afro hair because we had no way of using it in wigs.”

Carly Gorton, from Norfolk, was one mixed race supporter who previously wanted to donate her hair to LPT.

The 10-year-old helped highlight the fact that manufacturers were unable to use Afro hair in a series of interviews with the media last year.

The publicity generated by Carly led to The Little Princess Trust being introduced to Cynthia Stroud. Cynthia’s son had, like Carly, wanted to donate his hair but, being mixed race, had been unable to find anyone willing to take it.

Cynthia, an entrepreneur and TV food judge, began her own experiment and, after “considerable trial and error”, managed to make one wig by putting the hair in wefts in a different technique to the traditional way used.

The commitment and work that has gone on has shown just what is possible when groups of people get together and bring different skills to find a solution.

Conversations soon took place before Cynthia accepted an invitation from The Little Princess Trust to become an ambassador of the charity and help LPT with its aim of using Afro donations in wigs.

Liz Finan, from Raoul Wigmakers, has worked with our charity for several years, then began work on the trials with Afro hair for our charity.

And the result is two beautiful wigs made from Afro hair donations.

Phil Brace added: “The commitment and work that has gone on has shown just what is possible when groups of people get together and bring different skills to find a solution.

“We are so grateful to all those who have worked on the project to offer even greater choice to our beneficiaries, as well as being truly inclusive to our donors.

"Whilst we have always offered Afro style and curly wigs the new knotting process allows greater choice."