The Sunday Mail
Tsitsi Ndabambi Leisure Correspondent
NATURAL hair and hair weaves take the cup right now as far as trends go, but not for Richard Nyaku, a 29-year-old professional hairdresser.
Nyaku has refused to let wigs go out of style — at least for his loyal clients.
Talk of short wigs, human hair wigs, synthetic wigs or the wet ‘n’ wavy wigs — he does them all.
Describing himself as a down-to-earth, humble, fun and easy going person — Nyaku says he loves “uplifting”.
His passion for exploring new things led him to start making his own wigs for women at the Mt Pleasant hair studio where he works from.
“I chose to start doing wigs because it gives every lady out there a chance to have a new hair-do without having to visit the salon and also without having to pump out a lot of money all the time.
“Making women as beautiful as they can be motivates my creativity ego. Being able to give them that confidence boost they need from time to time, keeps me wanting to create new beautiful hairdos for them,” explained Nyaku.
He says he is not selfish with his talent.
“My artwork has changed a lot of women’s minds on how they look and see themselves beautywise, and I have helped a lot of people realise their talents by training them in this line of work, thus increasing a lot of competition.
“So I always have to up my game by striving to be perfect and coming up with different and better styles to be a step ahead of everyone all the time.”
He is not limited to wigs though. As a professional hairdresser, he does many types of hairstyles, including dreadlocks.
“Besides creating wigs I also do different kind of hairstyles as a hairdresser. My wigs have attracted mainly women in the corporate field who don’t have much time to visit a hairstylist regularly. Their desire to look good without a hustle is leading them my way, where I create different ranges of wigs that they can choose from.”
Responding to how other men view his work he said, “At first they looked at me differently since my line of work was believed to be mainly for women but now people are more civilised and they understand that gender is nothing when it comes to passion and profession.”
Richard says his interest in community business development, youth empowerment, and training others is not enough for him anymore, thus he is planning to do more in the future.
As an eternal optimist, in the near future he is hoping to have opened a couple of wig studios countrywide and beyond the borders through his current nationwide portfolio, which he says is growing daily.
“I am so excited about my business growth and vision, one thing about women is they love showing off, so who knows how far I could go just from word of mouth? I already have clients from South Africa, USA and the UK, just to name a few.”
