How to: Style your hair

From childhood, through puberty, to this very day I have loved my hair. I entered the world with  a full head of ginger hair and have always embraced the colourful hue my head produces. When I was younger I never endured the playground bullying many fellow redheads, my brother included, were subject to.

This may be because the I had some interesting ideas of how to ‘style’ my hair, and style it I did! Four buns randomly placed on my head -perfect! Multicoloured plait extension – threw ’em in! I just had a desire to play with hair. Lucky for my mum she was also included in the hair play, her classic early 2000’s mum crop (sorry mum) was subject to whatever hair accessories I could throw in there.

All this served me in good use as the years went by: straighteners, rollers, curling tongs, curling wands, french braids, dutch braids, crown braids, milkmaid braids give me a try and I’ll figure it out. My day to day hair is never extravagant, I have an abundance of fly-aways and baby hairs that require a lot of hairspray to be tamed, but when there is an occasion I am your gal for hairstyling.

Now, all this serves as the pretext for my hairstyling advise. It is a culmination of experimentation, magazine articles and YouTube — take it how you please.

Let us start at the beginning, washing your hair, or more specifically conditioning your hair. I have quite soft hair that is prone to greasiness, so as a rule of thumb I only ever condition from the ear lobe to the end of my hair. It minimises grease and keeps ends looking healthy. I know this is not universally applicable but the general consensus from the fair haired among us is that this keeps hair looking and feeling at its best.

Always use a heat protector when drying or putting any heat on your hair, it will help to fight the spilt ends. The key thing I have learnt from the years of toying with my hair, is that products do make all the difference, they can sometimes be expensive but that is what maintains photo worthy, weather resistant hair.

For straight or sleek looks use a hair oil, the best is definitely Moroccan oil, however it will cost you a weeks food shopping. When it comes to curls, waves or more dishevelled looks put a small, and I mean small, quantity of mouse in your hair before styling, too much will give you crispy hair — no one wants that. Post heat treatment the product you use depends on the look you are after. My general logic is to run my fingers through my hair to break up the curls if I want to look a bit messy or lightly brush them together if I want something more glam and vintage.

The holy grail of all hair care in my opinion is Elnett hairspray. I am and will be forever obsessed with the stuff. No matter what you do to your hair, add some Elnett if you want it to last, plus for hairspray it smells quite pleasant.

That is all the advise I have to offer on how to style your hair, with emphasis on the Elnett.