1st Attempt at My Partners Design (Me as Stylist)

For the final assessment I am working with Tara. She came to me with the three images on the left as inspiration for her desired hairstyle. Her character is image conscious and so desires a polished hairdo but has elements of madness in her personality that Tara wants to portray through little details in her design. For example: the plait running across the top of her head would be messy and the hair will be crimped and backcombed.


To start my first attempt, I began by sectioning her hair so I could create an even plait running behind her fringe. I braided the hair into a french plait and pinned it behind the ear, so hopefully the ending of the plait cannot be seen. In our next practise session, I will improve the plait by starting the braiding lower. The first image on the left shows how the plait does not actually start until about half way up and the other image shows how it ends behind the ear. To solve this, I will begin much lower down on Tara's head to make the plait more even and symmetrical. 

After I created the plait, I proceeded to section her hair further to create the elevation behind the plait that Tara wanted. I crimped the section and backcombed it with a pintail comb. I was finding it difficult to build up the right height with this particular comb so I moved onto using the afro comb and this made the technique easier and the finished result a lot smoother. From the front, it did not seem to have a lot of height but Tara was happy with this look to keep the hairstyle polished from the front and messy from behind. Next time, I will be able to be more confident with my backcombing and will be able to achieve the look much quicker. I will also try and gain a bit more height with the more time I will have so the front is more fitting with the height of the back. 

Finally, I attempted to produce a plaited bun at the bottom of the head. I put the hair in a ponytail and plaited it. As the hair was only partially crimped, due to my sectioning, there was different textures so next time I will definitely crimp the whole head. Once it was plaited, I teased it to make a thicker plait, wrapped it around itself and pinned it into place. Tara was happy with the style and agreed the texture should be consistent, however, I feel that in the next practise I will use more hair in the bun to create a bigger style as the plaited bun looked disproportional in comparison to the large plait and backcombed section.

Overall, I found this lesson very useful to have our first attempts at being designers and hair stylists. It gave me a chance to get to grips with Tara's hair type, length and design and allowed me to discover what I will need to do to make sure it is technically good as well as being how Tara has designed it. I have gathered enough information to hopefully perfect the look in our other practise sessions before our final assessments! 

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