A NAIL technician was mortified after splurging £500 on ‘princess hair’ only to end up looking like she’d been ‘dragged through a hedge backwards’ – after getting in a hot tub.
Lissa Paterson was delighted with her ‘lush’ hair extensions but two months later while at a party with friends she tied her hair up, jumped into a hot tub and ended up with them getting wet thanks to her unruly friends.
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But the 18-year-old was ‘mortified’ when she woke up the next morning to a ‘monstrosity’ of a hair-do as she looked like she’d been ‘tied to the bottom of a car and driven along the M40’.
Lissa said her friends were ‘speechless’ when they saw the ‘worst case of bed head’ they’d ever seen and she spent around 50 gruelling hours trying to comb out the knots in her matted hair.
The teen confesses that advice is to avoid chlorinated water, wearing your hair in a bun or sleeping with wet hair after having extensions fitted – and she managed to do all three in one night.
Due to lockdown, the beauty lover had to wait three months to visit the hairdressers to fix her ‘destroyed’ locks and claims it was the ‘best day’ when she eventually had them cut out.
She is now sharing her ordeal to raise awareness in a bid to spare others from getting their costly locks ‘ruined’ as she says she never expected the outcome of not following the aftercare to be so severe.
Lissa, of Banbury, Oxfordshire, said: “I wanted big long thick princess hair and ended up with troll’s hair to be honest. I think it [hair] was a lot worse than being dragged through a hedge backwards.
“I woke up and I literally thought I had a bee hive stuck in my head, it was horrendous. My hair was a monstrosity, it was just awful.
“My friends were just a bit speechless, they were just like ‘what has happened to your hair? I think you’ve woken up with the worst case of bed head we’ve ever seen’.
“It’s like I’d been tied to the bottom of a car and drove on the M40 or something, I don’t even know.
“We [friends] had a bit of a laugh about it. Everyone was just making jokes about it and asking what had happened, if I’d lost my hairbrush and if I’d had a good night’s sleep.”
Lissa said that all her life she’d had ‘amazing long hair’ but after getting a short graduated bob, ended up hating it and eventually bought hair extensions and had them professionally fitted.
Lissa said: “I was just with my friends one night in a hot tub drinking and one of them thought it was funny to dunk me under.
“I was like ‘oh my God, my hair extensions, what are you doing?’ and then I kind of laughed it off because I didn’t expect anything to happen, it was the first time I ever had them fitted.
“All the chlorine from the water got in my hair and it was just shoved up. I was so drunk I ended up passing out and forgot about it and when I woke up it was just one big lump of hair at the back of my head.
“I was just mortified. It was so matted, my hair barely went past my shoulders, before it was down to my bum – it’s just my luck that it happened to me.
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“They got absolutely ruined and destroyed after two months, it was definitely not worth the money.”
The 18-year-old said that she initially thought her hair was just tangled and needed a brush, but after dashing home to wash it, realised the extent of what had happened.
Lissa said: “Then I saw how bad it was. I think I had a heart attack, it was horrendous.
“It looked like my head had grown four inches on the back of it from this big lump of matt that was still inside it.
“Every day for the first week at least I was brushing it out for at least multiple hours a day. I was kind of losing hope and every few days when I’d wash it I’d try and give it a brush through.
“My main tactic initially was just getting a comb and ripping the knots out because half of them you couldn’t comb them out, it was quite something.
“It was painful to brush it because it was attached to loads of different beads throughout my head which were being pulled. I was having to hold it to my scalp at the top, comb it from the bottom, my head was just in agony.”
Lissa said that for three months she tried to conceal the ‘massive matted bits’ that remained in her head by wearing ponytails, hats and hoodies until she visited the hairdressers.
They spent five hours trying to comb it through with coconut oil and although most of it did come out, some of her natural hair had to be cut along with the extensions.
Lissa said: “My hairdresser’s mouth dropped when I went around. She was so shocked, after we got it all out she banned me from ever getting hair extensions again.
“It was the best day when I got it cut out. It felt so good to be able to run my fingers through my hair and not feel this big lump of matted, horrible hair.
“I was sad to see it all go. It was a really painful time at my hairdressers, it felt like it took ages and it was hurting from all the combing.
“It was quite devastating to get it cut out. We really tried not to, my poor hairdresser sat there for hours and hours and there was this one last bit that wouldn’t budge, we kept trying and after so long she said ‘I think we’re going to have to cut it out’.
I saw how bad it was. I think I had a heart attack, it was horrendous
Lissa Paterson
“She showed me it and it was horrendous – this horrible bit of hair that was like a massive three or four inch dreadlock.”
She said she can now laugh about the ‘ordeal’ but posted online to raise awareness of what can be the outcome if the aftercare for hair extensions isn’t followed.
Lissa said: “I keep seeing all these girls posting that they’re getting hair extensions done and I just think they all need to be warned.
“I kind of broke all the rules of hair extensions at once, but you still wouldn’t expect it to be that bad – don’t get them in chlorine, don’t put your hair in a high bun and don’t sleep with it wet. And don’t do all three together.
“I know they say don’t get them in chlorine if you can avoid it because it can dry it out, not to put it in a bun, and don’t sleep in it wet, but I’ve never heard for this reason.
“They don’t really explain in the aftercare that something this bad can happen. You just think that your hair’s going to get a bit dryer, or it might go a bit frizzy, you don’t expect it to absolutely destroy your own hair.
“A lot of teenage girls especially will think ‘oh it doesn’t matter, I won’t bother with that’.
“They don’t really tend to follow rules, we’re a bit rebellious I guess, so I just posted because it is a lot of teenage girls getting them and a lot of them can probably barely afford it, or their parents have bought it, and the last thing I would want is for the same thing to happen.”
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