Grand Salon’s Gina Saunders knows Natural Curls (and also molecular biology and genetic polymorphism as they relate to curly hair)!
We tapped Gina’s expertise for Grand’s latest tutorial and she shared some techniques (“Rake and Shake!”), styling tips and product recommendations for subduing frizz while encouraging natural, beautiful curl.
Whether you’re heading to the beach or the office, looking for something more-uniform or want to go big and add some drama, you can change up your natural pattern with curls.
Read the full transcript here:
My name is Gina. I’m with Grand Salon, and today I will be showing you a tutorial on how to wear your hair naturally curly.
Straight out of the shower, or after getting your hair completely wet, I try not to comb through my hair, or towel dry it even, too much. Curls are naturally really dry. We lack a moisture molecule that straight hair has, so I find it really important that the first thing you put in your hair is a leave-in conditioner. When applying my leave-in conditioner, I don’t rake through the hair. I grab my hair and I pull it all in a bunch, and I spin it. When you’re spinning it, you’re encouraging curl, and you’re also getting it everywhere.
Next, I like to move into your styling product. I’m gonna use the climate-control gel with Ouidad. The best way to apply it, for me, has been section by section. I like to start at the bottom of my hair, clip this up. This is when you wanna rake through your hair. I use a technique by Ouidad, it’s called “the rake and shake.” You take your fingers and you rake through the hair. The reason you do this is to get rid of the frizz. Your fingers are acting almost as a flat iron, to straighten and pull out any kind of frizz.
Okay, so after raking, you do the “shake” part of it. You hold the ends, and shake your hair. This encourages your natural curl to come back. You wanna do this when your hair is pretty wet. When you come to the top, if you elevate your section and go upwards, you’ll create more volume. So this gel is gonna create a cast over my hair, kinda leaving my hair crunchy when it’s dry.
But I need that because I have lots of frizz, but once it is dry, you can break it up with a serum, or just with your hands, kinda pulling out the product. So then once you get it to this point, you kinda wanna look at it and make sure everything’s going the way you want it to be. Like, my straighter pieces, I’ll take and just twist.
I recommend that you let your hair air dry. If you don’t have time to let it air dry, like I usually don’t, I prefer to use a diffuser that looks like this. This is the sock one, it’s the YS Park. This one’s universal, you can slip it on there, and put this strapper on the back. You don’t want anything that’s gonna blow your curls around too much because that’ll create the frizz.
So, once your hair is completely dry, you can go in and break up the product using a serum. I like the Shine Glaze Serum with Ouidad. You just need a tiny bit of this. This is gonna help to break up any kind of crunchiness or stiffness from the gel that we used. You don’t wanna go in and rake through your hair, if you do that, you’re just gonna make it bigger and frizzier. I like to grab my hair all as one, and kinda twist. So you can leave it just like this if you want more of a texture-y, beach-y kinda look. I like to add in my own curls and make it as big as I can.
The best thing you can do is use a curling iron that is closest to the size of your natural curls. I find that the way to make your curls look most natural when using a curling iron is to use the wrapping technique. I don’t like to go in and clamp it with a curling iron because that creates too much of an artificial-looking curl. Take fine pieces. The bigger the piece, the bigger your curl will be.
So, just by adding in a couple curls, it can completely change the look of your natural pattern. It can add more drama to it, making it bigger, and it can also make it a little more uniformed, not so beach-y or texture-y. You can go as far as you want, make it as curly as you want, or you can leave it in kind of the in-between stages.
