Description

Learn how to create lots of gorgeous hairstyles with “How to Make Braids”! Watch video tutorials and find out how to freshen up your hair with lots of gorgeous braided hairstyles!
- Learn how to do four and five strand braids!
- Find out how to make easy headbands!
- Follow step-by-step instructions and learn how to make the crown or waterfall!
- Waterfall, French, fishtail, braided bun, and much more!
Plait is a complex structure or pattern formed by intertwining three or more strands of flexible material such as textile fibres, wire, or human hair. Compared to the process of weaving a wide sheet of cloth from two separate, perpendicular groups of strands (warp and weft), it is usually long and narrow, with each component strand functionally equivalent in zigzagging forward through the overlapping mass of the others.
The simplest possible plait is a flat, solid, three-strand structure in some countries/cases called a plait. More complex ones can be constructed from an arbitrary (but usually odd) number of strands to create a wider range of structures: wider ribbon-like bands, hollow or solid cylindrical cords, or broad mats which resemble a rudimentary perpendicular weave.
They are commonly used to make rope, decorative objects, and hairstyles. Complex ones have been used to create hanging fiber artworks.
Unlike the simplest form of three-strand, in which all of the hair is initially divided into three sections which are simultaneously gathered together near the scalp, a French braid starts with three small sections near the crown of the head; these initial sections are braided together toward the nape of the neck, gradually adding more to each section as it crosses in from the side into the center of the structure. The final result incorporates all of it into a smoothly woven pattern over the scalp. If the main mass is initially parted into two or more sections along the scalp that are kept separate from one another, multiple ones may be created, each in its own section.
Compared to the simplest form of hair braid, a French one has several practical advantages: it can restrain from the top of the head that is too short to reach the nape of the neck, and it spreads the weight and tension as more elegant and sophisticated. However, it is more difficult to construct than a simple one because of its greater complexity; when performed on one's own hair, it also requires a more prolonged elevation of the hands above the back of the head, and leaves more tangled parts along the scalp when unbraiding.
It is unclear when it originated, or how it became associated with France in the English-speaking world; in the French language, the same one is called tresse africaine (‘African’) or tresse indienne (‘Indian’).