How I Style My Hair, Part One: Basics & High Ponytail

by Cate Flannery

Let me introduce you to my hair first. It has long layers, giving it a nice angled shape on the bottom. I also have a heavy side part in the front third-ish of my hair. (PS: This is our awesome lyrics wall in our room! Harper made it. And if you're wondering - we took these pictures before we left for break, hence why they are featuring our dorm room, not my house.)

Here's my hair from the back (excuse my pajama pants... I don't really have an excuse though, I'm just lazy):

I live in a pretty dry climate, so I get a LOT of flyaways.

The first style I'm going to do is a high ponytail, because it's a basic style for a lot of others, and is a good way to learn how to deal with layers.

To start, you'll need a hairbrush, water, and a hairband.

If you wear glasses, it's best to take them off before starting. Brush your hair, using water to tame fly-aways.

With non-layered hair that has a straight part, it's pretty easy to do a ponytail. You can kind of just gather up the hair on the sides, brush it together, and voila. That doesn't work as well for me...

It just looks kind-of off, and the hair from my part is all bunched up. Putting my hair into a ponytail takes just a little more effort.

You want to start on the side with the bigger part. Gently start brushing the hair up and back.

Do the same on the other side.

Now you've probably noticed there's a gap because of the part. This is normal. After you have the sides brushed up, brush back right over this area. It will smooth out the part and make the hair look even.

You might have to do this a few times as you gather the rest of the hair.

After you have the front taken care of, start brushing up and back from the sides and the back, gathering all of my hair. It's important to brush all of it up, because of the layers. If you try to just gather it with your hand, chances are you won't catch all of the layers and they will fall out. Also, if you brush as you go, you won't have any bumps.

You might notice that it's a little all over the place. This is normal. That's where the water will come in.

Wet your brush, and starting at the top of the gathered hair, just brush it. This will help it all to go in the same direction. The nice thing about having layers is, again, you get an angular shape, and that looks good in a ponytail.

Now you can do any fixes you need to (you might need to brush it all together again, if you haven't been holding onto it very tightly), and secure it with a ponytail holder. You could also put the ponytail holder in and then brush the ponytail out.

There you go! You have a nice high ponytail that's not going to fall out!

Next lesson: Ballet bun