I have been a hair stylist for 30 years now. I can’t even believe it when I write that!
From as far back as I can remember in my life I always knew this would be my passion, my career.
Being a hairstylist has taught me so much about life. It has given me a thick skin. It has taught me to accept criticism even when I don’t want to hear it. It has taught me that while I make people beautiful, true beauty lies within.
Hair extensions came into my career ten years ago.
Since I have started doing hair extensions I had the fast fleeting thought, “what if there was a shortage of hair?”
While there is not a shortage of hair, there is a shortage of GREAT hair. Hair that withstands the test of time, curling irons, flat irons, washing, and brushing. I have used amazing hair and not so amazing hair. I have had to replace hair that was matted and a mess at my cost due to poor quality.
The business of hair extensions is growing ten fold on the daily and so is the amount of companies that produce the hair to supply the demand. But not all extensions are created as equal as you have read.
I sit back and watch and listen as social media battles it out for the good, bad, the beautiful and the ugliness of hair extensions. As I observed and learned there is a huge need in the hand tied hair extensions market for exceptional hair.
So I dug in, did my research and developed my own line of extensions that have the quality stylists and clients deserve.
Over the next few weeks I am going to outline what separates Adored Signature Hand Tied Hair Extensions from other lines of extensions.
#1 The BEST hair comes from India – Adored Signature Hand Tied Hair Extensions comes exclusively from India
In that time I started to figure out the BEST hair comes from India. The reason being that the Hindu religion believes in a religious sacrifice called tonsuring. Many people make the pilgrimage to the temples and sacrifice their hair to the gods. It is believed that to sacrifice something so beautiful to the gods, by shedding their egos, the gods will bless them with good luck in return.
The people know the temples will sell the hair and the earnings are put back into the community for improvements. When the hair is collected in the temples it is held together in a ponytail. The ponytail holds the hair together where it is closest to the scalp. This is important because then all the hair is flowing in one direction. That means the cuticle is all facing the same direction. This is called Remy hair.
Why is this important?
A strand of hair has an outer layer called the “cuticle”. If the cuticle is not all facing the same direction (from scalp to ends) and it is turned into an extension the hair will tangle something fierce! A cuticle looks like a pine tree of sorts and if some are upside down it catches. That brings me to “cuticle intact” which means that the hair has not been put through an acid bath where it strips the cuticle off.
This is done in factories where the hair has been sold to them from hair markets. At the hair markets the hair is collected from brushes, drains and floors. It looks like a SOS pad and is sold by weight. This is a common practice in China.
There is no way for them to tediously go through every strand, under a microscope, to figure out which way the cuticle is directed. So they gather the hair, brush it out and dunk in an “acid bath” that strips the cuticle away.
The hair then is coated with silicone. It resembles Barbie hair. It feels like a horse tail. (There are instances in which real hair is even mixed with animal hair to make it thicker. If you are allergic to animal hair, you will have an awful reaction to this hair that you just paid a small fortune for!)
This is why I chose Indian Remy Hair for Adored Signature Hair Extensions and you will see and understand it when you install it on your clients.
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