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Hair-raising style

Kathleen Lippa
Northern News Services

Iqaluit (Apr 18/05) - Eight hairdressing students are getting set to graduate from Nunavut Arctic College and as a final exam they treated all of Iqaluit to a special hair and fashion show last week.

Christine Agligoitok of Cambridge Bay, Yvonne Angohiatok of Cambridge Bay, Sheilla Aoudla of Iqaluit, Matilda Kaput of Rankin Inlet, Tai-Lucy Pitsiulak of Kimmirut, Elisapee Quassa of Iglulik, Irene Tapardjuk of Iglulik and Cecile Gibbon of Arviat all had to present models (mostly family and friends of the students) showing off hairstyles, from funky to sophisticated passing through wild and classy, and incorporating traditional braids and modern colour.

Aoudla, Kaput and Agligoitok will head to Yellowknife for a National Skills Competition on April 21.

Aoudla was nervous before the Saturday night show held at the Francophone Centre in Iqaluit, but said she won't be nervous at the National Skills Competition in Yellowknife.

Last year at the competition, Aoudla won a bronze medal for her hairdressing. It would have been gold if she hadn't, in her view, messed up a hair cut.

"I changed my mind at the last minute," Aoudla explained.

Aoudla started hairdressing at home years ago, often doing corn rows and up-dos on her mom and sister. Two years ago she started the hairdressing program at the insistence of a close cousin.

For her "final exam" her models - boyfriend Joshua Kiguktak, daughter Dezerea Aoudla-Phillip, 4, and cousin Rhoda Aoudla - showed off brilliant colour, twists, braids, and shaved shapes, some from her own imagination, others drawn from a recent hairdressing trip to Montreal.

Of her cousin's black hair streaked with red and topped with a flower, she said: "I just let her hair flow."

Dezerea's zigzagging corn rows took two and a half hours to do. Her boyfriend's shocks of blue hair in the front also took a while.

As time consuming as hairdressing can be, Aoudla is happy she took the course, and recommends it to anyone, "if it's what they really want to do."

Aoudla hopes to work at the Baffin Hair Studio in Iqaluit. Like many of the graduates she would like to head up her own salon one day.