How do I start to do dreadlocks for others?

How Do I Start Making Dreadlocks for Others?

Twenty-six years ago, before I was Ann-Marie Christell the loctician, I was just a teenager in Fagersta, Sweden, sitting in front of a friend's hair with absolutely no idea what I was doing.

It started because a friend of mine had been on a trip to London, wandered through Kensington Market, and came home completely captivated by all the dreadlocks she'd seen there. She wanted them for herself. And somehow, I was the only person she knew who was even remotely willing to try.

This was before the internet existed in any real way. So we did what you did back then — we went to the library. We looked up dreadlocks in the encyclopedia, hoping to find some kind of instruction. There was nothing. No technique, no guidance, no photos of how it was actually done. So we just tried anyway.

The result was a disaster. I'm genuinely grateful there are no surviving photos, because that hair was rough. I don't even have contact with that friend anymore, so I can't show you what we did to her poor head that day. But something started in me during that experiment — a pull toward this craft that never really let go, even through the mess of learning it.

I share that story because I think it's the honest starting point for a question I get asked constantly: how do I even begin learning to make dreadlocks for other people?

There Isn't Just One Way In

Over the years, I've watched people take this journey through a few different doors. There's no single right way to start, but there are real differences in what each path costs you — in time, in mistakes, and in the trust of the people who eventually sit in your chair.

You can wing it, the way I originally did. Watch the free videos. Buy a mannequin head. Find friends willing to be experimented on. Learn slowly, through trial and error, over years.

You can find a mentor — someone already doing this work well, whose technique and energy you trust, and learn directly from them, hands-on, over time.

Or you can pursue formal training, learning a complete, structured method from someone who has already done the work of figuring out what actually holds up over decades.

I went the self-taught route in the beginning, simply because there was no other option available to me at the time. I want to be honest with you about what that path actually looks like, because I think people romanticize it more than it deserves. It took me years of trial, error, contradictory information, and mistakes on real people's heads before I developed something that actually worked — something gentle on my hands, gentle on my clients' scalps, and built to last. If a mentor or a structured training had existed for me back then, I would have taken it in a heartbeat.

Why This Isn't a Casual Decision — For You or For Them

Here's the thing I most want anyone starting this journey to understand, no matter which path they take.

The people who eventually sit in your chair have usually been dreaming about their dreadlocks for a very long time. Not weeks. Often years. Sometimes decades. I hear this constantly from my own clients — ten years, twenty years, twenty-five years of quietly carrying this dream before they finally acted on it.

That is something to be deeply respected. Because what I've witnessed, over and over across 26 years of doing this work, is that this dream — once it finally becomes real — holds an inner transformation for people that goes far beyond the hair itself.

Before I work with any client, I have a video consultation with them first. I sit down, get to know them, understand what's bringing them to this moment. The more I know about who's coming into my space, the better I can prepare — what hair I need, what technique will serve them best, what kind of energy I should be ready to hold. And by the time they leave my chair, after all those hours together, there's almost always a visible shift. A shimmer in the eyes. Something has moved from the inside out.

Months later, when I see these clients again, they tell me about the ripple effects. Someone finally goes for the job they wanted. Someone finally tells the person they've had feelings for. Someone finally enrolls in the education they'd been putting off. The dreadlocks were never really the whole story. They were the doorway.

If You're Learning As You Go — Communicate

If you do choose to start learning by doing — testing things out, building your skill over time, the way I originally did — there is one thing I want to underline above everything else: communication.

Tell your early clients exactly where you are in your learning. Be honest that you're still testing, still developing your technique, that you can't yet guarantee a particular outcome. Some people will be totally fine with that — they're happy to be part of your learning process. Others aren't, and that's important information too. Either way, the honesty is what builds the trust that lets you keep doing this work well.

And when something doesn't go the way you hoped — because it will happen, to every single one of us — meet your client where they are. Fix what can be fixed. Honor what happened instead of hiding from it. That willingness to stay present through the mistakes, rather than disappearing from them, is genuinely one of the biggest reasons I'm still doing this work 26 years later.

You Never Stop Learning

I'll be honest — I know a tremendous amount about dreadlocks at this point. I can do this work almost in my sleep. But I still learn something new with nearly every single client who sits in my chair. I still learn something new with nearly every student I teach, whether that's online or in person, because everyone absorbs information differently, and every head of hair asks something slightly different of you.

If there's one thing I hope you take from all of this, it's that being open to learning — for the rest of your career, not just at the start of it — is what separates the locticians who last from the ones who don't.

And honoring every client's journey, every single time they sit down in front of you, is what turns this from a technical skill into the kind of work that actually means something.

If any of this is stirring something in you — if you feel that pull to learn this work the way I teach it, with real respect for the technique and for the person underneath it — I'd love to hear from you.

I'd also love to know — are you just starting to think about this path, or are you already working as a loctician looking to grow? Let me know in the comments, and I'll keep making content that meets you where you are.

Get my FREE ebook Becoming a Loctician here: https://www.seienstyle.com/becoming-a-loctician-ebook

Learn more about my online course, The Professional Loctician Online Course, with one-on-one coaching directly from me: https://www.seienstyle.com/loctician-course

Learn more about my in-person classes — I can either come to a capital close to you, or you can come to me for an in-person experience: https://www.seienstyle.com/the-professional-loctician-in-person-training

Book a one-on-one video call with me to see if working together is the right path for you: https://calendly.com/sereneflow/30min

With love, Ann-Marie