by Jennifer Searle

Created on: December 08, 2008

The French Twist hair style is a sophisticated all purpose hair-do that can been taken from the office, to the party, and even to a wedding. There are many variations on the French twist, but the basic French twist has only a few easy steps in achieving a stylish do in a matter of minutes.

You can begin with clean, washed and dried hair, or hair that has gone a day between washings. You will need some bobby pins, a fine tooth comb, a brush, and hair spray. I prefer aerosol hair spray, but pump hair spray works too.

Brush hair out thoroughly from roots to tip. Then with your fingers, section off the top section of hair from the top of your temples back to the crown. Pin this section up and out of the way. The direction of your twist will depend on which hand you are dominate with, but for the purpose of the article I will be doing it as a right-handed person.

Brush the bottom section back into a low, loose ponytail and hold in your dominate hand. With your dominate hand positioned palm up holding the hair over your hand, begin to twist pulling the hair up towards the crown of your head. Your hand will continue to move farther down the section of hair until you are holding the ends in your hand and your hair is twisted almost up to the crown.

From here you will want to tuck the ends in your hand under the twist part. It is easiest to do this while holding the twist against your head with your non-dominate hand. Once the hair has been tucked under, and while you are holding it with your non-dominate hand, pin the hair starting at the bottom going upwards with your dominate hand. Usually it takes five or six pins to secure, but with thicker hair you may need more.

Once your twist is secure in the back, let the top section of your hair down. You will want to part this section in half horizontally.

The crown section will need to be back-combed slightly to give a little lift to the top of your hair, unless you are going for the slicked back, tight look. Back-comb this section at the roots, then back comb the front section a little at the roots if you tend to have flat hair in front. You will want to leave enough hair in the front not back-combed to smooth over the back-combing.

Once you have back-combed and smoothed the section over, pull the hair back towards the crown and hold in the non-dominate hand. With the hair held between your thumb and forefinger, palm facing down, place your fingers just outside the beginning of the lump of the twist. This is going to be on the

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