The Infamous Ouidad Cut and Twist Set

This weekend I took the Bee for her first Ouidad haircut and style. It was as much about mommy and Nina one on one time as it was the haircut.  Nina had asking every morning this week when her appointment was and this morning she appeared at my bedside at 6am fully dressed (in her "high heels" of course).  She was ready to go.

For now I want to  share the Ouidad experience.  If you don't know what Ouidad is you probably dont have curly hair.  If you  (or your child) have curly hair and still don't know Ouidad wow are you going to be glad to learn about this!

I stumbled on Oidad while desperately searching looking for a hairdresser for Nina.  The kids cut place I take the other girls too is cute and fun and they let you pick out a fruit flavored shampoo but if you need much more than a bang trim you're in trouble.  They HACKED Nina's curls so badly last time I actually stopped the cut and pulled her out of the chair.

I remember asking the girl if she had every cut TIGHT curly hair before?  Had she ever cut an African American child's hair before? All I got was a blank stare.  Eeeeeesh I live in Wonderbread Land.

So anyway I've been trying to find someplace nearby where the stylists actually know what they are doing and that's how I landed on Ouidad.  The actual Ouidad salons are in New York and CA (we will be visiting the NYC salon soon), but there are Ouidad certified stylists who have been trained in Oiudad techniques and one (shockingly) was actually in my town!

So bright and early Saturday morning we arrived at the salon.

LOOKING. LIKE. THIS!

Actually is was much worse than this picture shows.  Nina was being pretty shy and she wasn't willing to pose but take it from me, it was bad.  When you seriously consider swapping a comb for dad's beard trimmer,  it's bad.

So off to the bowl she went where they propped her up on many MANY towels and then washed her hair. They spent A LOT of time conditioning her hair with several different products.  Then while her hair was still soaking wet and still full of one of the many conditioners TWO people combed it out using this special two pronged comb.

Now Nina always complains and often screams and cries when I comb her hair but this time she laid back as still as can be and seemed comfortable the entire time.  She has since dubbed this her "magic comb".

After she was all combed out the stylist cut her hair, cleaning up the ends and giving it a really nice shape.  They use a technique called carving and slicing but to me it just looked like a hair cut...a good one.  No more does she have the bushy halo of frizz and curl.

Once she was cut the stylist showed me ho how to do a couple of styles on the Bee.  I love them all and Nina was content to let me practice.  We decided that we would use the twist set method for today.  I am told (we shall see) that this method would allow Nina to go for a few days to a week with out having to redo it.  It is really easy to do; one inch sections covered in product to keep it moist, split in two sections and twist.

Here's a quick video of the stylists (plural!) doing it on Nina.

   

And here they are almost all twisted.

Once fully twisted, ahem, it was dryer time.  The Bee wasn't too sure about this.  This is not what our dryer at home looks like! But we read a few books together while she dried and she ended up liking the "warm bath" the dryer gave her.

Here is how it looked as we started to gently untwist her locks (I was told I could leave them twisted for a day and then untwist on day two if I wanted the style to last longer.

Once the hair was untwisted another gel was used to soften the hair.  One thing I hate with other things I've tried is how goopy and sticky her hair felt but not this time. Her hair felt as soft and silky as her Chinese sister's hair.  It was beautiful.

Her hair was still a little damp when we left but I could see her curl pattern was once again gorgeous and the cut was very good-transitional for now-but still very good.

Of course I bought EVERYTHING they used on her head and I am now full of expectations that I too can make her curls rock.

 

Here's another shot of her curl pattern from the side.  It's not a great shot but she wasn't really interested in her hair at this point because after TWO HOURS in the salon she was ready to get out of the car and get to some eggs and pancakes.

After her marathon hair salon visit we had a day of mommy and me time; breakfast, shopping, a new purse for each of us and an ice cream cone to share.