Crown hair have always focused on the importance of your hair texture and how it affects styling and longevity of your cut. This week, the Crown team discuss the Curly Girl Method…
What is the Curl Girl Method? Although the basis of the ethos has been in hairdressing for a number of years, Lorraine Massey brought the concept to the mainstream. The method is about firstly classifying the type of curls you have, and the best approach to caring for and styling that type.
Crown hair’s Director of Styling Mark Jones believes understanding the types of products your curly needs is an important step.
“Identify how much product to use and not to be too scared of it… use conditioners and leave them in so you get as much moisture on hair that is most distressed,” he explains
“The pre-conception of conditioners and treatments is that is weighs the hair down and makes the hair greasy, limp. on curly hair, it’s the opposite. If you put the right moisture into the hair and let it dry or put it under the Climazon, it will spring up evenly. So what we’re trying to do is even out the porosity but also the unevenness of the curl. so by using the right amount of product, and identifying if it’s an oil, a cream, then it will make the curl very even in texture,” says Mark.
It’s about mapping out what type of curls that are on one head of hair; for example, tighter curls at the back, weaker curls in the middle and to go through and identify all of that before you start combing and washing.”
Crown’s Director of Colour Kathy gilbert agrees with the ethos of understanding texture and matching products is important.
“I think understanding the different textures of curly hair (is important). There’s different textures of curly hair and the most relevant thing I’ve read recently, but never heard described so clearly, is that particularly curly hair and zig zag hair is always going to be dry at the tips because the oil doesn’t get to run straight down the hair strand. It gets trapped up near the root and so it ends up the hair near the tips is dry and crunchy and always feels dry, and that’s where you need to put that moisture back in yourself,” says Kathy.
“Christophe Robin has beautiful products that have different weights of moisture so they’re suitable for different types of hair. It (the method) also identifies what frizz is, which is just a lack of moisture. It’s an interesting thing for us to recognise, that we really need to clearly define the difference between curly hair and straight hair and to know how to navigate it to get the best result.
I think the interesting thing about the Curly Girl Method is that is knowledge that all hairdressers have, and I guess it highlights an area where we have let our clients down a little bit, because we’ve stopped being able to share that knowledge in a way that they’ve been able to attach to,” says Kathy.
Kathy is also a strong believer in a good finish being key to loving your curls.
“I’ve always believed that curly hair dried off properly will get a much more beautiful result. People have had too many experiences where their hair has been dried off in a rush which will never get the best result. It needs to be pinned into place and dried off slowly and evenly. But we’ve got great tools for that now, we’ve got the Dyson Airwrap, for example. If we show people what the result is and let their hair be dried off slowly while its held in a place where you get the volume at the root; when you create shape with curly hair, it’s beautiful,”
Principal Stylist Bond explains that there is now a great range of finishing products available for curly hair
“No matter what type of curl you have, we have you covered with some exciting new releases; for example, the Oribe Priming Lotion, Iles Curl Revive plus the launch of Christophe Robin’s two new curl specific products,” says Bond.
Ask us for more information on giving your curls all the TLC they need next time you’re at Crown!
