| Rukey Styles gives hope to women with hair loss |
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| Healthy Hair | |||
| Wednesday, 14 October 2009 12:18 | |||
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Rukey Styles, celebrity stylist (Photo Credit: Harmony Restored, Inc.)
Healing in her handsStyles transforms hair loss into hope
By Nichole M. Palmer, My Salon Scoop editor
CHICAGO — Rukey Styles' hands speak volumes.
Using the blank canvas of a woman's head, be it with hair or not, Styles transforms the raw texture into works of love that reawaken her clients' natural feminine mystique.
Her clients come to her dealing with life traumas: chemotherapy, burns, surgery, traction alopecia, female-pattern baldness, and hormonal changes that take medication to manage.
Hair that was once full and luscious is now sparse or completely gone. Some clients had looked for months — no years — for hair in all the wrong places: boxes and bottles, store-bought wigs and weaves.
But then they find Harmony Restored, Inc. — an intimate space nestled in the corner of a doctor's office on Chicago's Gold Coast. There, Styles transforms their looks. When she's done, the women beam between the tears. Their tresses are back, and they are whole again.
Grandma's baby Helping women embrace their natural hair textures brings Styles joy, which she says, was nurtured in her as a youngster.
"I loooooved my grandmother," says Styles whose eyes moisten at the memory of the woman who inspired her to create with scissors. "She was the backbone. Anything that I thought I could do, she knew that I could do it."
Lounethel Edwards taught Styles to see the beauty of heads. Edwards was a milliner in Chicago before Styles was born. She owned a hat shop downtown when it wasn't "proper" for black people to do so.
"She pushed me to do things," the young celebrity stylist says. "And, I just regret she didn't get a chance to see Harmony Restored."
However, Edwards knew the depth of her granddaughter's talent. She was there when Styles finished at the Pivot Point International Academy in 1993. She saw her do well at various fashion shows and tradeshows including the Black Women's Expo. With every added success Styles' vision kept expanding. Edwards hoped that would include helping women like her.
"She was anxious for me to figure out something because she had female-pattern baldness," shares Styles, adding that Edwards also couldn't wait for Styles to have her name in credits.
Sadly, Edwards didn't get a chance to see it. She died in 2005.
With her grandmother gone, Styles enrolled at the On Set Salon and Motion Picture Hair Academy in Los Angeles. Being there broadened her creative reach.
Styles works behind the scenes at an event. (Photo credit: Harmony Restored, Inc.)
"I was asked to work on a calendar shoot with the rapper Twista from Chicago. I didn't really expect it. But, I was asked to do it. I was excited about doing it. And I enjoyed it," she says.
The hours were long, but working with like-minded professionals inspired her.
Soon, her work began to grace the magazine pages of ASIS, Sophisticate's Black Hair Magazine, Ebony and Salon Sense. She was hired to work on projects for Lalah Hathaway, Beanie Seigel and Lillana. She did more videos and TV spots. She worked on the 2007 film "Of Boys and Men" starring Angela Bassett. Then, her custom wigs and hairpieces appeared on "Good Morning America."
Styles was fast becoming a household name.
Rukey's style Fans quickly spot her work a mile away.
"I think that I'm very versatile on style. I thought that you probably wouldn't be able to say, ‘OK Rukey did that,'" she says. "But I have some friends and clients that say, ‘I know your signature. I know what you do.' That's really flattering to me."
Styles' work ranges from the everyday to fantasy. And no matter the hair genre, she says, she always manages to "put a Rukey Styles on it." She points to the butterfly piece as an example.
"The photographer said he wanted something very abstract — pieces of hair sticking out," she remembers. "Well, I thought maybe he'd want something dread-like and something that I could form and give shape. Looking like a sculpture, but then (also) looking like hair."
Styles is never lost for inspiration. Whether following someone else's vision or pushing forth her own as the shoot coordinator and concept developer, she finds ideas everywhere.
"It can be anything," she says. "A piece of clothing, an object...a lot of times it's just a feeling that I just need to vent."
Back to her roots One of the feelings she's had to vent about recently is teaching black women how to embrace their natural hair and care for it with love.
A client transformed with a full-cranial prosthetic. (Photo credit: Harmony Restored, Inc.)
Part of why Styles two years ago separated her celebrity business from her hair restoration business is because she began to see more and more women with hair loss.
When she first started doing hair restoration, the women she saw were going through chemotherapy, had hereditary issues, or had been in tragic accidents where they had been severely burned. But lately, she says, she's seeing clients who have just made poor hair choices: too tight braids, tightly twisted locs, over-processed hair, and then there were the stylists using crazy glue.
"They put crazy glue on those braids to secure them. That can't be a good thing," she says, the concern in her voice rising. "There's no way to remove it than to break your hair or cut it."
Styles developed a unique non-surgical hair-replacement technique made to mimic real hair. She offers full cranial prosthetics, strand-by-strand hair replacement, lacefront wigs and hairpieces, and has created integration units for partial hair loss.
Her products are made for the specific client — size, type and materials used. It's all about the individual's needs.
Though she has the skills to help women who need her, it's her heart to instruct them on how not to get to that point. Sometimes, it's as simple as changing the way you do your hair. And then to get really radical about it, she says, lay off the relaxer. Over-processing kills your hair. And to Styles, the price for bone straight hair isn't worth the effort.
"My people know. I'm more interested in the health of your hair. It's just not needed."
Nichole M. Palmer is a writer, editor and president/artistic director of Our Voices, LLC — a writing and editing consulting firm/entertainment studio in Gary, Ind.
Copyright 2009 © My Salon Scoop, LLC Comments (1)
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