As a woman, young or old, the first thing you will probably notice is the hair style the next woman is wearing. Some women do have signature hairstyles, which makes them stand out. Hair styles too give women a sense of confidence and so for this week our focus is on hair beauticians popularly called hair dressers. Lilian Onuoha, a 34 years old graduate of psychology, who developed her passion as a hair beautician, explains what it takes to be a good hair stylist.
As a graduate why hair dressing?
I didn’t set out to take hair making on full time, I have the passion for it. My neighbour back in the days was a hair dresser so at times when she has lots of customers, she will ask me to finish it up for her, that was how I started learning, I have never had any formal training, it’s what I will call a talent. When I make hair for my family and friends, I get referrals, these referrals kept coming, so I figured I can actually make a living from this, so I became a full time hair stylist five years ago, but I started making hair for friends 18 years ago. If you add five years to it, that’s how long I have being making ladies look beautiful.
What makes this job a difficult one?
Some customers are just hard to understand, my degree in psychology comes in handy at times but at times, I usually don’t know what to do. Take for instance, you come to me to make your hair, then you ask me to choose a style that best suit your face, half way into making the hair you tell me to loose the hair that you don’t like it – she has changed her mind, this situation can make some days more difficult than the others, and you have to stay calm, it’s not easy. Then again getting the right description of styles, if you don’t give the description of a particular style that you want, you might end up with a style that is totally different, and will end up blaming the hair stylist, then again there are some styles that are not suitable for some shapes of head and face, and when you advise they tend to always ignore, so when they end up looking weird (laughs) they put the blame on the innocent stylist that has done nothing but listened to clients instructions.
When making braids, most stylist make the centre quite bigger than the front, is this for a malicious reason?
I don’t think it’s something done maliciously, it’s mostly done to give balance to the hair, if I pick the hair at the front or at the back in same size, it may become too full and heavy the beauty of the whole hair might be lost, so it’s important to find a balance when making braids especially.
In recent times, women are beginning to find solace in wearing wigs for the purpose of convenience, how has this affected business?
Truth be told it has affected business, most people just want to wear a ready to wear wig without the stress of staying in the salon for hours, people even save up to buy these wigs, but for wigs in Ghana weaving, I personally believe they are yet to get that perfectly right, like they have done with weave-ons’, but truth be told it has in some ways affected business, one thing I understand about fashion is that it keeps evolving, so as a hair stylist you need to keep reinventing and understand the trend.
Word of advice for intending hair beauticians
First you need to be willing to learn and unlearn, be creative, think outside the box, let your passion lead you, don’t be money driven otherwise you may lose focus, do what makes you happy and the money will be a bonus.
