Technical File- Sleek Ponytail and French Pleat

Lottie 3^rd March 2016

Sleek Ponytail

You will need:

Salt spray

Hair dryer

Pin tail comb

Hair bungee

Paddle brush

Sectioning clips

Hairspray

Hair grips

Hair straighteners

Method:

Brush all of the hair back using a paddle brush and apply salt spray to the front of the hair at the hair line.

Use a hair drier with a nozzle attachment to dry the hair with the salt spray in using a paddle brush to brush the hair backwards.

Use a pin tail comb to section off the hair at the top of the head between the temples, bringing the section into a point. Clip this section out of the way.

Spray salt spray all over the rest of the hair and then use a denman brush to brush the hair into a ponytail, ask the model to tilt their head back as you do this so that the hair at the bottom of the ponytail stay tight to the scalp when the model puts their head upright.

Secure the ponytail using a hair bungee, place the first hook into the hair usually at the side or top works best, then wrap the bungee tightly around the hair and place the other grip in the hair. If you do not have a normal hair bungee you can use a hair band with two Kirby grips attached to it.

The take the sectioned off top section, comb in back over the ponytail and use another hair bungee around the ponytail so that the top section is now part of the ponytail.

Then take a small section from the ponytail, put hairspray in it, wrap it around the hair bungee to hide it and secure it with Kirby grips.

Then straighten the hair in the ponytail.

Without the quiff

Quiff:

If you want to you can put a quiff in the top section of hair instead of it being flat.

To do this backcomb the whole of the section of hair.

Then smooth the hair backwards and shape it into the shape you want the quiff to be.

Use a Kirby grip to hold it in place.

Then put then add the section into the ponytail following the same method as before.

With a quiff

Evaluation:

Completing the ponytail without the quiff went well as the only thing that took me a bit of time to get right was making sure the hair going into the ponytail was completely smooth and that there were no bumps. For the ponytail with a quiff it was a bit difficult to shape the hair evenly whilst still keeping the volume of the quiff. I think I could of backcombed the hair more to create more height in the quiff as mine was very low.

French Pleat

You will need:

Paddle brush

Pin tail comb

Kirby grips

Bun pins

Tongs or rollers

Mousse

Heat defence spray

Hairspray

Use either heated rollers or tongs to set the hair. Curl the hair at the sides of the head backwards, putting the rollers in or tonging the hair vertically and curl the hair on top of the head backwards by putting the rollers in or tonging the hair horizontally.

When the hair is completely cool and set then remove the rollers and gentle brush the curls out.

Section off the hair at the top of the head and square it off at the back.

Backcomb the section then twist the section and pin using a Kirby grips.

Backcomb the hair at the sides if you need to in order to add volume.

Brush the hair back and pin using grips just off centre. Put the grips vertically going up towards the top of the head, you can cross the grips over each other if you want to. Then put a grip in the top of the hair going downwards to keep all of the hair in place.

Then twist the hair up to create the pleat, secure it using bun pins to begin with but do not fully push them into the hair until you get the shape you want so you can remove them easily if you need to. Use bun pins because they are easier to remove from the hair than kirby grips so you will not ruin the hairstyle.

When you are happy with the shape, push the bun pins fully into the hair and use Kirby grips to completely secure the hair.

Finish with hairspray.

Alternately you can have the top section out of the pleat. Therefore complete the pleat how you would do normally just skip the steps where you twist the top section. After you have completed the pleat style the top section. You can backcomb it, curl it, twist it or style it however you choose to create different looks.

The photographs above show how you would complete the pleat if you were not incorporating the top section into it.

I used mouse and heat defence spray on the top section of hair before curling it with tongs to help the curls keep a strong structure and stay in place. I then positioned them how I wanted before using hairspray to keep them in place. In the second look I changed the curls position and softened some of them by using by fingers to break them up a bit just to create a slightly softer look.

 Evaluation:
At first I found creating the pleat shape without it being uneven quite difficult as I wasn't twisting the hair correctly. However I found this easier after taking the pleat out and trying again a couple more times. Also I found that the hair stayed in place a lot better when the grips in the pleat were crossed over each other. When I curled the top section of hair the curls stayed in place quite well because I prepared the hair with product but next time I would use small pins to attach the curls to the rest of the hair so they stayed in exactly the right place.