Practise Full Elizabethan Hair style on my Assessment Model

For our topic brief in our recent studio session we were given two sheets of paper with the description of a hair design that contains either frizzing of curling at the front and it must be heart shaped. The section sheet reads the back must be up in a bun shape. It can incorporate plaits or twists. You can use ribbons, pearls anything that we think will give our hairstyle and Elizabethan feel. For our final hair assessment we have been put in partners and have to work on each other’s hair. My partner has African hair which is plaited in braids all the way down her back. As not all the hair is her own I can’t apply heat to my models hair which could form frizzing or curls. This was quite a challenge for me as I've never worked on African hair, my design would purely be based on structure and creativity.

I started with looking and playing around with my models hair, just to feel the texture and the roots, length and how heaving the hair was. To me the hair felt rough and tight in it plaits and quite firm. The hair is very long and there’s a lot of it so it was very heavy.

I started with firstly trying to creating the heart shaped beehive at the back of the hair. I sectioned the front part away in line with the ears and rest went backwards. I then started applying the rats in the first side of the head and as her hair was already in plaits I couldn’t plait the hair again to hold the rats to the head. Instead I placed the rats near the end of the hair and wrapped the hair round it until it reached the roots and gripped the hair together and the rats to the hair. I found this extremely hard on my first attempt as the hair was so heaving and the grips were so hard to slide into the hair as it the braids were very firm to push through. I think I attempted the first side around 3 times before I got it to stay up in the hair securely. As there was little too much hair at the front and I wanted to give the heart beehive a little more height I pulled some more of the hair from the front to the back and clipped it over in place. I used the small bobby pin grips and the wider grips to secure the hair which were in the colour of black to match my models hair so they would be unseen. After doing one side of the hair I then had to do exactly the same on the other side and just leaving a slight gap in the middle to create the heart shape. Once both sides were up in the heart shaped beehive, I wanted to frame to hair between the beehive and the front part of the hair, I did this by taking 3 strands from underneath the side of the hair, plaiting it, then wrapping it round the head to the other side and gripping it to the scalp and so on for the other side.

I then had to start working on the front of the hair before doing the back because I wasn’t sure if I could finish the whole design and include a bun. With the front strands I got the ends of the hair wrapped it round two of my fingers and started rolling it up the hair and gripped the twist to the surface of the beehive. I did this with each strand of hair that was at the front and gripped all of the down. I found this relatively easy to do as where the hair is very course when creating smaller twists is easier to put into place. I did 6 twists on each side of the front of the hair and placed them purely where I thought looked nice. I think this technique at the front of the hair looks very textured and contemporary and incorporates the feel of a curl at the front without applying heat to the hair.

After completing the front and top of the hair I realised I had plenty of time left over to create the bun at the back. I created the bun by using an extremely large hair band, putting it in a ponytail and twisting the whole hair round the bun and gripping it into place. This was relativity easy to do after 2 attempts. I then studied my hair design and placed in any grips where needed to be.

Overall I’m extremely happy with my hair design as I have incorporated all the techniques that needed to created, in the overall Elizabethan hairstyle from the brief.  I managed to complete the hair design in around 1 hour and 30 minutes which I was very happy with as all my time now can do it get better and my designs can become more elaborate. I feel for my first time touching and styling African hair I’m very pleased with how I handled the hair, the structure and the final outcome. During creating the hair design my main focus and hardest part was creating the heart shaped beehive and the hair was so heavy and it was a struggle to get the grips through the hair. However after a few practices I feel that I will get better and quicker at doing the design and getting used to the hair. If I could improve anything I would try and hide the grips more (even though they are black) and also try and even up the heart shaped beehive and one side was slightly smaller than the other. However I can improve on my faults and will practise more on my models hair until I get it right. Overall I’m very pleased with how I worked and managed my models hair and I think the design and style looks very contemporary Elizabethan.