When planning this tutorial for natural hairstyles, we knew we had to recruit the hair mavens at Mane Addicts to help us find the master in natural styling - and they delivered.
Celebrity hairstylist Cesar Ramirez glams up performers like Ciara, Jennifer Hudson, and Kelly Rowland, and when we tasked him with creating seven easy DIY natural hair looks - one for every day of the week - he nailed it.
Many times, you see an expert tutorial where the looks are great, but they're impossible to do alone at home.
To drive home the point that these are truly a solo activity, we recruited blogger Grasie Mercedes, whom Ramirez taught each look before she demonstrated alone on camera.
Ramirez was inspired to create fresh looks that weren't already plastered all over the internet.
"It gets redundant with natural hairstyles, because everyone goes for the same styles," Ramirez said.
"I wanted to be inspired by those ideas and put my twist on them.
I don't like to copy anything.
It was incorporating the styles I normally do for upstyling into these natural styles." The collective favorite was Friday's look, which incorporated a piece of flair into an updo.
(PS: it was a necklace!) "You can really tailor it to your style," Ramirez said.
"If you're bohemian, go with a boho piece.
If you're a little bit more tough, you can add spikes.
You can tailor it to your personality.
And it can go from super casual, or you can glam it up and make it into a red carpet look, a wedding look." These looks can be tailored to any natural hair length, even short natural hair - it's not about how big or how long the hair is.
It's all about showing off the texture of your hair.
"It's not about it being super polished, or too sleek, or overly product," Ramirez said.
"You can do it in 10-15 minutes on dry hair, on the second or third day, and you don't want to wash your hair because you are going out or have somewhere to go.
It's more about texture than length or trying too hard." To prep Mercedes's hair and to moisturize and keep the curl pattern in place, Ramirez started by applying