- What's up, y'all, my name is Simi,
I'm a lifestyle influencer,
and this is my wash day routine
for my signature crochet wig.
[calm music]
The steps to my wash day routine include
detangling my hair, shampooing my hair,
doing a deep conditioner with a steam,
and then also washing all of that out
and applying styling cream so that I can put twists
underneath my wig, and then the very last step
is making my crochet wig.
I don't typically follow a texture category
when it comes to my hair, but I will say
that for my curls, they typically fall more
on the kinky slash coily side, and my curls
are a little bit tighter when they're dry.
So my first step of my routine is detangling
and I typically wet my hair while I'm in the shower
and use my EZ Detangler Brush.
My biggest concern when I am taking care of my hair
is my scalp.
I do deal with psoriasis on my scalp,
so I typically just make sure that my scalp is clean,
feeling refreshed before I move on
to any different steps in my wash day routine.
I know people typically section their hair
when they're shampooing but for me,
my scalp is my priority, so I don't section off my hair.
Instead, I focus on penetrating the shampoo
onto my scalp and stretching my hair.
For my shampoo process, I love to use
the Neutrogena T/Gel Shampoo.
I find that after I use it, especially consistently
every single week, my flakiness and my itchiness
is down by a lot in comparison
to when I don't use it, so my next step
is deep conditioning my hair, and I love to use
the Mielle Organics Pomegranate and Honey
Moisturizing and Detangling Conditioner.
So I really love using this conditioner
because it softens my hair and brings it moisture
after using the Neutrogena T/Gel shampoo,
which is a little bit drying to my hair.
I'll typically put on a shower cap and let my hair steam
with a steamer.
I started doing natural end of middle school
into high school.
Me and my mother and my sister, we just didn't want
to relax our hair anymore, especially after my mother
discovered how dangerous some of the chemicals
in relaxing was.
For the three of us to have to kind of navigate
this new way of taking care of our hair,
it bonded us in a way that we had to kind of
like learn and struggle our way through figuring out
how to wash our hair now, how to condition it,
how to make sure it looked neat and taken care of
and all of these things, and I feel like it really
brought us closer.
So I just finished my deep conditioner,
and now I'm about to go in and do my two-strand twist
that will go underneath my crochet wig.
So I do a two-strand twist because I don't know
how to cornrow, please don't judge me, okay?
So I really love using the Camille Rose Twisting Butter,
because it's really light on my strands,
it's not too heavy, and it also gives me
a great curl pattern once I take the twists out.
I don't usually have a method when I'm twisting my hair,
I just twist it according to how much hair
I can pull off for each section,
and that's because it's really detangled,
it's really soft because of the deep conditioning process.
Now I'm about to go in with The Mane Choice
Restorative Spray, and I love using this product
because I feel like it gives my hair
an extra amount of moisture without it being
super heavy like a leave-in conditioner,
and it really just helps my twists last longer.
So what helps for me is putting on a silk scarf
so that I Can flatten my twists while I'm doing
my crochet wig.
Tools I'm gonna use to make my crochet wig
are a braided wig cap, 'cause y'all know
I can't cornrow, okay?
A crochet tool, which you can get for like 99 cents
at the hair store, and some crochet hair.
This is Outre Cuevana Bounce in colors 350 and 1.
And essentially what you're gonna do
is you're gonna take your crochet needle,
pull the hook down so that it looks like this,
put the hook through the crochet braid,
and make sure you get all the way to the other side
of the braid so that it's pretty seamless
when you pull it through.
You're going to attach your hair and basically
what you do when you take the hair off of the piece
in the package is make it into one long strand,
attach it at the middle part of the hair,
clip on the hook so that it looks like this,
close your clip, pull the needle through the braid,
and sometimes it does get stuck
so you will have to pull a little hard,
and then put your hand through the loop
and then loop the hair through, and then pull.
And that's how you attach the hair to the crochet wig.
So after doing one full braid and adding crochet hair
to the wig, this is typically what it looks like,
as you can see the hair is covering the braided area.
So the only downside to using synthetic hair,
particularly this Cuevana Bounce hair,
is that you really can't do too much activity
with the hair on.
I of course can like work out and do like heavy activity
like that, but being in the water is something
that I can't do with this hair, I can't go underwater,
I can't be in an area where there's like too much steam
because the curls will definitely fall.
And instead of having these really beautiful,
semi-tight kind of loose curls,
they'll just be entirely loose, like almost droopy
and you'll lose the texture and the curl entirely.
So now, I'm all finished the crochet wig,
as you can see it's pretty full,
it has lots of volume.
What I'm gonna do next is put the crochet wig on
and style and cut the hair so that it shapes my face.
I usually just put the wig on directly onto my twists,
and the combs are on either side of the wig.
I put the combs from front to back but sometimes
I put them from side to side, it just depends
on your preference.
So what I'm gonna start with is separating the curls
just so that they can have a little bit more volume
and not be so tight around my face.
And this also does add a more natural look as well,
'cause it gives a little bit of frizziness
as I'm separating the curls.
You can see which areas are going to need cutting
such as these bottom areas, some around the side as well.
So separating the curls does help you figure out
how you want to shape the hair.
I'm gonna put the scissor on the diagonal and cut down.
And I'm just gonna cut from the bottom area
and if I want to cut more then I'll go even higher.
When cutting, I typically focus on the bottoms
and the sides, and the reason for that is because
if I need to cut in the middle or even at the top,
it'll help me see what the bottom and the sides look like
before I touch those areas because if you cut too much
on the top or the middle, you're pretty much
just like out of luck, but if you cut too much
at the bottom, you can always just add in more hair.
Now I'm going to work on the bangs in the front
and basically what I'm gonna do is take one section,
go down as far as I want the bangs to basically
like hit my forehead, and cut on a diagonal.
All right y'all, so at this point, I am finished
the wig, I really love how it came out.
So tomorrow, I'm going to share with y'all
exactly how I take care of my hair
for the amount of weeks that I wear the wig
and the different products that I use.
[calm music]
What's up, y'all, welcome back.
As you can see, I have finished my crochet wig
and now I'm about to show y'all how to maintain the wig
for about four to six weeks.
I typically don't use product on the wig at all
because it is synthetic hair, but what I will do
is maintain the frizz as much as I can
and that usually looks like me not sleeping in the wig,
me taking off the wig, if I can,
during vigorous activity like working out,
especially if I'm working out at home
and then also using sheers or scissors
to cut off any frizzy ends of the wig,
and separating the hair as much as possible
so that you can maintain that natural look.
I also wrap my hair at night in a silk scarf
just to make sure I'm not pulling on any ends.
My natural hair now means so much more to me
than when I first transitioned into being natural.
I think when I first transitioned,
I was really afraid of embracing
my natural hair which means that I was afraid
of taking care of my natural hair,
even just like being in my natural hair
for long periods of time.
I think I just suffered from things like colorism
and texturism and I was under the assumption
that I had to have long, curly, wavy,
beautiful, soft hair in order to be pretty
or feel beautiful.
So eventually I was able to overcome
all of those feelings and take care of my natural hair
in a way that made me feel empowered
and also let me take an honest look at myself
in my most natural state, and eventually
I just learned to love it.