Yak Hair and How to Dye it

To create the postiche pieces we would use yak hair as it had a similar texture and thickness to human hair. We would store this within the drawing matt shown on the left side of the picture above. This would allow us to pull out individual pieces while also preventing the hair from becoming tangled.
Before we could even start to create the pieces we would have to dye the hair if what we already had wasn't the desired colour.
A way to dye or bleach the hair would be to mix the dye or bleach with warm water and a bit of conditioner and allow the hair to sit in the mixture. This would stop the hair from becoming too damaged and brittle during the process. Although with this method it was found that the hair cuticle was too strong and wouldn't always allow the products to penetrate. To resolve this we could allow the hair to sit in vinegar, this would loosen up the cuticle allowing the colour to penetrate.
When dying the hair we wouldn't use all of it as to stop the postiche piece from looking like a block of colour but this means we had to mix the coloured hair with the undyed hair. This would be done by running all the hair through the equipment shown below called a Hackle. We had to throw one end of the hair onto the nails while gripping the others, we would pull this towards us. Doing this would not only mix the colours but would also undo any knots in the hair making it easier for us to place it within a drawing mat to later be used to create the appliances.


References

Spin-Off Magazine (2023) What Is a Hackle? Available at: https://spinoffmagazine.com/hackle/ (Accessed: 13 January 2023).

Wig Dressing, Fitting and Maintenance (2023) Hoddereducation.co.uk. Available at: https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/media/Documents/Hair%20and%20Beauty/Wig-dressing-fitting-and-maintenance-Chapter-18.pdf (Accessed: 13 January 2023).



 

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