Cornrows on best; boho-style knotless field braids at the backside
Picture: Symphony Dixon
Combing, pulling, stretching, fiddling. Environment, flat-ironing, and heat-drying. Our hair places up with so much from us. To your shoppers with textured hair, that may imply a continuing chance of breakage. You’ll pay attention the hair pleading: Simply give me a relaxation!
Kinds of Protecting Types
The answer is to provide those shoppers a protecting genre. Starr Mason, Box Training Chief at Hair Cuttery Circle of relatives of Manufacturers, is a professional on protecting kinds and wears them herself. Providing your consumer a protecting genre signifies you’ll both duvet the hair, tie it into position, or mix the ones two methods. Mason identifies 4 common classes of protecting kinds.
Wigs. A wig is without equal protecting genre. No longer simplest is the buyer not able to the touch the hair, however environmental components additionally can not succeed in it. Beneath the wig, the pure hair may also be cornrow-braided to stay it secure and in position. Wigs may also be fabricated from both human hair or artificial hair.
The massive merit to wigs, Mason says, is the facility to simply transfer up the way. A consumer with more than one wigs can put on one genre for paintings and feature a fully other glance to visit an match the similar night.
“With wigs, I can change my attitude,” Mason says. “My hair can be short and curly or long and flowing.”
Crochet braids

Starr Mason dressed in crochet braids
To succeed in a crochet genre, first braid the hair in cornrows after which use a “latch hook” crochet device to glue extensions. At two to a few hours, the looping means of attaching the hair is going a lot more briefly than braiding naturally lengthy, textured hair right into a equivalent glance.
“The cool thing about crochet styles is that the add-in hair comes in many different styles, textures, and colors,” Mason says. “The guest picks what she wants, you braid her hair and then crochet the hair into the braiding, and the crochet comes out only when you cut it out.”
Normally, the crochet lasts a few month, relying at the texture of the hair—the straighter and finer the feel, the shorter the period of time. Typically an artificial mix, the add-on hair can simply be rinsed within the bathe.
Cornrows
Whilst cornrows stay the hair in position underneath a wig or with a crochet, in addition they is usually a genre on their very own, however Mason cautions stylists to take into accout of visitors with thinning hair. For a super glance, Mason suggests growing cornrows that shape a little bit ponytail after which attaching an extended or curly ponytail onto the ends.
Different braiding
Braids have all the time been a great way to give protection to textured hair or stay any hair from reacting to the weather. Braids give the buyer a mode she will stay for days with little further upkeep. The drawback is the time concerned. Braiding lengthy, textured hair into numerous person braids can take so long as 10 hours, consistent with Mason.
Weaves

Starr Mason’s daughter dressed in a weave
Weaves proceed to have their fanatics. To do a conventional sew-in weave, the stylist sews a weft of, most often, human hair onto prebraided hair with a distinct stitching needle and particular thread. Visitors can both choose to have a partial, “leave-out” weave that leaves the pure hair out on the best to mix it or make a selection “full closure” and not using a hair not noted.
“A weave is a classic look,” Masons notes. “It looks more like it’s the person’s real hair. Your client will look as if she has long, flowy hair.”
As it’s human hair, weaves may also be dear, Mason provides. While a five-pack of artificial hair for a crochet would possibly price $30, even though the buyer wears all 5 immediately it’s nowhere close to the price of what could be a $300 weave. However you’ll take out a weave and reuse it, whilst the unreal hair isn’t reusable.
Go away it to the Execs
Although you don’t be offering protecting kinds, you will have to inspire your protecting genre visitors to come back to you, the pro, for the preservice—the shampoo, conditioner and protein remedy—and for any colour carrier. Then you’ll refer your visitor to a expert in protecting kinds.
“Let’s say that your guest is getting an extension of blonde cornrows,” Mason says. “Her natural hair should be blonde as well. Suggest bringing in her extension hair so that you can match the color perfectly.”
As well as, you’ll assist your protecting genre shoppers to take care of scalp well being.
“Apply a serum or oil to the scalp after it’s braided but before you add a crochet or wig,” Mason recommends. “The oil helps loosen up the braid while adding protective moisture. Apply it at the part with a needle-nose dropper; the body temperature will melt it and spread it throughout the head. This step helps the hair from getting dry and causing breakage, which would defeat the purpose of wearing the protective style.”
The Transfer from Chemical Relaxers
Protecting kinds have advanced.
Mason explains, “When I was growing up, we wore our hair braided and got it pressed to make it straighter. Braiding was considered a ‘locked down’ style. We didn’t call it ‘protective,’ but since we weren’t using heat to curl it or blow it dry, the braiding was protecting the hair.”
Between the braiding of Mason’s formative years and the protecting kinds of nowadays got here many years of chemical relaxers that gave other folks with textured hair the facility to put on straighter seems. Mason says protecting kinds started changing chemical relaxers at more or less the morning time of the twenty first century, when the fad modified to extra natural-looking kinds.
“When this movement started, people would go through the ‘big chop’ to cut off their relaxer hair and leave the new, natural hair coming in,” Mason explains. “We would give them a protective style to let their hair grow out before the big chop—to protect that new hair from breakage at the point where natural hair meets relaxer hair. People were also still flat-ironing their curly or coily hair, which makes the hair lose its curl pattern. So we protected their hair to give it a rest.”
Males’s hair by no means fairly went thru this transition.
“When men wear their hair braided, they’re considered to just have a braided look,” Mason says. They wouldn’t discuss with it as a protecting genre. It’s simply their genre.”
“It’s a Lifesaver”
For day-to-day upkeep of textured hair, there’s not anything like a protecting genre.
“Your hair is part of your fashion,” Mason says, a reality that hairdressers see performed out daily of their chairs. “If your hair is a mess, even if you’re wearing the best clothes you don’t feel like yourself.”
That’s why Mason believes girls with textured hair are prepared to funds for protecting kinds that stay day-to-day upkeep time at a minimal.
“It’s a lifesaver,” she says. “With my natural hair, I have to set it with gel at night, comb it out in the morning, and then apply more product. With a protective style, I sleep in a silk bonnet, remove it in the morning, spray in a leave-in conditioner with a little water, run my fingers through the crochet, and I’m ready to go. My curls are set.”
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