NEW HAIR! / The Desi Dossier

There is a huge change thats gone on recently, and those who follow us on IG, Facebook and Twitter, you'll all have seen.

I went purple! Many shades of purple actually, but purple none the less. I am now an Asian girl with purple hair. (I put this in for girls like me who googled this and only got oriental girls.)

We did it at home, using products we read about from Halima, Fashionicide. She's also of Asian decent, with natural dark brown hair, might be black, we're all confused about our hair, and I have to say she was my main role model. I'd loved the whole mermaid, pastel hair trend that had emerged quite full on recently, and my main concern was that it wouldn't suit me. So seeing Halima with full on bleached and dyed mermaid locks kinda cemented the idea in my mind. While I had wanted to do it before going to Mauritius, I decided to wait, after speaking to a hair dresser about, and I'm glad I did. The negative response I've received from quite a few judgy characters in my family is over powering, not to mention the stares that I get on the street. But that's the negatives, and as much as I've had those, I've had 3 times the amount of positivity towards it. I get stopped by random people telling me they love my hair, people saying that I'm so brave that I took this leap, and of course looking into the mirror and seeing the amazingness staring back at me. After its style of course, not before.

I have killed my hair. Not ashamed to say it. It all came down to the final bleaching. I'll ask Kayennat to write a post on what she did, how she did later, as I'm not fully sure. I sat down, and let her get on with it. There was some shouting on my part, but it went smoothly enough.

So, the final bleaching, we'd run out of the TIGI bleaching powder (Tigi's Copyright Colour True Light Bleach) Halima had used, and so ended up using 2 boxes of Bleach London's bleaching kit, and a box L'Oreal Preference Absolute Platinum in Extreme Platinum for the final bleaching. I had also saturated my hair in coconut oil overnight for the first day of bleaching (3 times), and so the condition of my hair was pretty good afterwards. The final time, a week later, there was so many factors that worked against me.The TIGI running out, the fact that I only put coconut oil on my hair a mere hours before bleaching, and did't saturate it, the length of time I'd waited. That last bit is probably was did it. I was painting my nails. My stupid nails, and when my head basically started burning, I realised the damage was done. I was talking to my mom at the time and had to run out on her, ripped the cling film off, there was actual steam coming off my head btw, and jumped in the shower. I normally shower in HOT water. I had to put it down to luke warm. And the amount of hair I had lost. OMG.

I toned it after using the Wella Lightest Ash Blonde Toner, and then went in with Pravanas, and after that topped it up with Directions Lilac. I had to use three tubes of Pravana and one & a half tubs of Directions. I have a lot of hair.

I didn't want to wait for the TIGI bleaching powder to arrive, because I hated my in-between hair, and I've paid the price. While my hair looks amazing in pictures, the condition of it in real life isn't great at all, and after having ridiculously healthy strong hair all my life, it was an adjustment. Now my hair is dry, some layers have broken off, so I have some bit of my hair that is a couple of inches long, and I can run my fingers in it without coming to knots.

But. I love it. It's an experience and get to treat my hair to intensive masks everytime I wash it, so that while I'm in the shower, my hair is frigging silk. Then I ring the water out and its not so great but whatevs.

I'll do a list of products that I am using at the moment later on.

Lessons learnt: No shortcuts.

Here, enjoy some pictures of the purple, in chronological order. More pics of the process will follow soon.