Erwan Fichou came up with the concept for Dogwool after observing discarded hair from nearby salons floating in the street, reminding him of tumbleweed. Intrigued whether it would be possible to spin the human hair he had seen into a workable material, the photographer contacted Doumé Jalat-Dehen, a craftswoman known for fashioning wool out of dog hair. To create the wool, fur is collected through regular brushing before undergoing traditional wool-making processes. A laborious process from beginning to end, it can take up to seven years to collect enough fur to make a jumper similar to those pictured. It then takes approximately two hours for a specialist like Jalat-Dehan to transform the collected fur into a ready-to-knit, 50 gram ball of wool.

Jalat-Dehan introduced Fichou to a selection of her clients who had crafted clothing out of the wool she spun from their pets’ molted fur. The resulting images show the pairs brimming with pride, bonded in both love and ensembles.