If 15-year-old Black-ish actress Yara Shahidi isn’t on your radar just yet, then the time to get acquainted with her is definitely now.
With beauty, brains and a beautiful head of hair, Teen Vogue snagged the proud naturalista since birth to model five different ways to style natural hair. Cute, right? Interestingly, Shahidi is following in her own mother’s footsteps, who is Keri-Selter, one of the most recognized model/actress in the natural hair world.
Celebrity hairstlyist Lacy Redway hooked up Shaidi’s coily mane with a number of inspiring hairstyles for those who are already natural, transitioning or even thinking about starting their natural hair journey. “This shoot means so much to me because it’s personal to me. I wish growing up I had more people with hair that looked like this in magazines,” Redway captioned one of the photo’s from the shoot on Instagram.
Continue scrolling to check out the full photoshoot and find out how Redway executed each look.
“Yara has great hair and beautiful curls. It didn’t take much for her to get this look. If you don’t have this exact texture and you wanna get this look, you can do a twist-out. Try a two-strand twist, and set it with a little mousse or hair cream. I recommend you leave the twists in overnight, because you want the style to set and last. In the morning, when it’s all dry and set, use your fingers to separate the strands, and then use a hair pick or wide tooth comb to loosen up the roots.”
“This look was transitional from the bun; I used water to reactivate the gel after taking down the bun. Then I created a deep center part and used a scarf to tie the hair off to make sure the back stayed frizzy. Next, I dried the top gelled part with my hair dryer and diffuser to help control the heat. Finally, I brushed out her curls to make the ends frizzier and poofier.”
“In the front, there are two French braids that we pinned towards the back of her ears. I wanted to accentuate all her curls and texture, so I didn’t want to do styles where you couldn’t really see her beautiful hair.”
“I used gel for the high pony puff, because I wanted it to be shiny. I used a product that has a weird name – Gorilla Snot gel. To pull the hair up, I used a Bungee, which is great for natural hair. You hook one side of the elastic into the hair and wrap it around the ponytail a couple of times to keep it in place, and then you take the second hook and attach it to the first one,” Lacy says. “I wrapped the hair around the bungee and used hair pins to help me create that round shape and secure the bun. For that high neckline, I really wanted to showcase her face…you can see in her eyes this confidence at age 15. It’s beautiful.”
