Video: How to Create Elegant & Formal Updo Hairstyles

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About the Expert

Jeremy Clark

Jeremy Clark is a professional hair stylist and salon owner.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Jeremy Clark, professional hairstylist and salon owner. And today, I'm going to show you how to do an elegant and formal updo. First, take a look at the jawline and the bone structure. And using that line, I want to continue that up to point the hair along the jawline and lifting it up. So, what I'm going to do is, just create some body and some fullness. And pull the hair up to about the central point, right above the occipital. So, the tools you'll need are, some bobby pins, some elastics, a back combing comb, a natural boar bristle brush and a full control hairspray. So, I'm going to use the Garnier Fructis Full Control Anti-Humidity Hairspray. So, to start spray a little hairspray on the ends of your fingers. I'm just going to work that through the hair, distribute it through the hair, is going to give us a little texture and a little control. My next step, I want to section the hair into top, sides and back. I'm just going right behind the ear, to the top of the head. And I want to section out the top , starting right where the head starts to curve down into the side. Just take that whole piece, and that on top. And I'm going to leave the bang section out. If you have bangs, at home, you can leave them out, if you don't have bangs, then go ahead and take that whole section and pull it up to the top. I'm just going to pin that out of the way, for now. I'm going to take a section of the top hair, and move that out of the way, pin that to the very top. I'm going to look at the jawline again, and following that line that's created by her jaw, to about here. I'm going to place a small ponytail,and this is going to be our foundation point. Create a ponytail that we can pin the rest of the hair to. And you just want to lightly back comb, lifting the hair up. This part, you don't have to worry about it looking too precise or pretty, because this is going to hidden by the rest of the hairstyle. And with an elastic, we'll just pin that right to the head. So, that's our foundation point, this will be what we pin the rest of the hair to. So, you can see, I've now sectioned the hair. The sides are sectioned out, the top, the crown, the middle of the back and then, the bottom. And what I'm going to do at this point, having established where we're going to pin the hair to, which is that little ponytail. Go back and back comb through the hair, just at the roots, lightly. And then, take each section and pin it up to the ponytail. And just pulling the hair up, over directing, a little bit of back combing at the roots, and continuing on down through the sections. Back combing all the hair, so it goes straight up, give you lots of height and volume. You can see the hair is now back combed, I've lifted everything up and away from the face. When you're back combing the sides of the hair, you actually want to take the hair vertically and back comb at this angle. And that just helps disguise the back combing, helps hide it. Let's drop the sections, I'm going to start with the bottom section underneath, to point all the hair out of the way. And then, I'm going to start lifting these sections up to that ponytail that we established earlier, and pin them right there. So, theres the bottom, been pinned into that ponytail. We'll just leave the excess hair out for now. I'm going to continue on, pinning the hair, pulling it up and just giving it a little bit of volume. So, it doesn't have to be too tight, we need lots of fullness in the hair for the moment. You can get this look with curly hair, but that would be with more texture. If you really want to get that sort of smooth and formal look. You would need to blow your hair out, or possible have it flat ironed, it would need to be smoother. So, you can still see our original ponytail, this is the hair hanging from that. And I'm pulling the hair, not too tightly, and feeding it right over to that ponytail. And then, with just a little twist on the hair that's left, pinning right into that foundation point. And I'm just taking, you can even blend it just a little bit. Bringing it right over to that center point and then, lightly twisting to give myself something to anchor to, and that's where you pin it. And it just pins right into that ponytail. So, you can see, I've pulled all the hair back up into that little ponytail foundation section, including the sides and the top. So, just lightly keeping a lot of fullness in the hair. And the same thing, taking it to that center point, a little twist, to give it something to anchor to. I'm going to pin that right there. So, the basic hairstyle has been established and now, we want to do something with all this hair that's left over. And so, I'm going to take that and we'll spin tat around a bit, and just create something a little dressy. Feeding it into a nice, little bun, tucking the ends in. And then, you pin basically where you hold it, I want to put a pin right in the middle too, just to make sure that those hairs that we tucked stay in. Just keep some pins right through the middle, to make sure everything is nice and secure. Okay, and at this point, I want to go through and just, let's clean up all these little straight hairs that are left over. You can pin those right into that center point. So, you can see, I just finished pinning everything back. And then, we took the bangs and swept them over to the side. And it just gives it a really polished and sophisticated look. It's a little bit more mature, definitely more styled, not so youthful. There you go, thats how to create an elegant and formal updo. I'm Jeremy Clark, thanks for watching.