Secret Bryant (Portland) is a traditional African American hair stylist and hair braider. Every workday, she braids cornrows, box braids, extensions, and more. She learned hair-braiding techniques at her mother’s knee.
Bio
Secret Bryant, who was born in Portales, New Mexico and grew up in Los Angeles, carries forward a long-standing family tradition. Her great- grandmother, grandmother, and mother had all been hair stylists. Bryant remembers that as a little girl she would imitate her mother’s hair braiding. By the time she was eight years old, she was braiding other people’s hair. By age 12 she was regularly braiding her uncle’s hair. More than other hair styles, braiding requires fine finger coordination, hand strength, and patience as well as artistry. Cornrows are braided very close to the scalp with a technique that consistently raises the braid into neat rows, whereas box braids are named for the square-shaped hair divisions at the root of each braid. Twists are made by first dividing and then twisting individual hair sections and then twisting two of these twists together. Hair extension techniques weave natural or synthetic hair into existing hair to add length, color, and/or volume, whereas crochets begin with a cornrowed scalp and attach extensions to the cornrows with a device similar to a crochet hook. Bryant employs all those techniques and more at her own small hair salon, Southern Styles & Barber, on Portland’s Martin Luther King Boulevard. Most of her clients seek her out specifically for skillful hair braiding. When someone comes in and asks Bryant to do something special, she relies on her religious faith to guide her, as she believes that God gives her the wisdom to see a design that would suit that person. Some of the designs she creates are so complicated that they can take her up to 12 hours to complete.
