TikTok stylist offers full-service braiding experience, education to clients and followers

Hairstylist and braider Tillie Dixson wants her clients and her more than 414,000 TikTok followers to know how to take care of their hair on their own.

Dixson, or That1 Stylist as she is known on her website and social media, doesn’t just braid her clients' hair. As a licensed cosmetologist and someone who has a full-service salon, she is able to offer a bit more than the standard service – including teaching her clients.

"We do need clients to have a job, but there’s plenty of people to go around," Dixson said about stylists. "I want to make people comfortable with doing their hair and just know a bit more about their hair so they don’t have to rely on anyone else."

As she completes each step in her braiding process, Dixson talks to her customers about the qualities of their strands – the type, texture, density and porosity, which is the hair’s ability to absorb and retain moisture.

She tells them what products she uses on their hair and why. She creates a list of hair care products they can use to improve or retain hair health and provides free samples. She recommends silk pillowcases and bonnets, because silk doesn’t rub or snag on braided hair.

As a cosmetology student, she hadn’t learned much about taking care of curly or textured hair. Both the curriculum and client base at her cosmetology school didn’t give her the opportunity to work on Black people's hair.

Two years later, as a stylist with a larger social media following, she has the ability to teach about textured hair and break the stigma that it is harder to work with than straight hair.

“There’s just this misconception that textured or curly hair is hard to do or people don’t know how to do it,” she said. “That is what drew me to educating.”

Choosing the 'curly-hair side'

Dixson did not always know she wanted to braid hair, or even pursue other cosmetology jobs, as a career.

When she was young, she used to do her dolls' hair and loved styling her own but she didn’t see it as a good career option until she graduated high school. She knew she didn’t want to go back to school for four years but also didn’t want to keep working at Panda Express.

So, she decided to attend Aveda Frederic’s Institute Indianapolis, where she studied cosmetology from October 2019 to December 2020.

In cosmetology school, Dixson learned many lessons that have helped her run her business, including the importance of showing up on time and the basics of hair cutting and styling. However, because of her textbook and the fact that her cosmetology school did not have many Black clients or teachers, she did not learn much about curly and textured hair.

After she graduated and interviewed at a few salons for apprenticeships, she decided she wanted to go a different route than salons that typically serviced straight-hair individuals and did not have many Black clients.

“There is definitely a straight-hair side of the industry and then there is a curly-hair side,” she said. “There are so many salons you can go to and get your hair colored nowadays but you don’t really have many natural hair salons.”

Dixson felt like she was more needed on the curly side.

In April 2021, she rented a space in a salon where she started styling and braiding textured hair and then moved into her current space, a one-room suite above another salon, in December 2021.

'Nothing compares'

Dixson has not always wanted to do hair. But her clients wouldn’t believe that.

Brenda Woodard, 71, said the stylist has an innate ability.

Woodard had been looking for a permanent stylist since she moved to Indiana 20 years ago. Her search stopped when she found Dixson.

“I said, ‘This is the place I’ve been looking for,’” Woodard said about her first appointment.

When Woodard first started going to Dixson, her hair was breaking at the roots. Now, the length is coming back.

Jeff Brown, 30, said Dixson's braids are professional and tight yet she never pulls too much while braiding his hair. He also said he has learned things about his hair he never knew before talking to Dixson, such as his hair’s porosity and what type of products to use because of that.

“I get that experience and I know I’m leaving away not only with my hair braided but my hair getting helped,” he said.

Naomi Gideon-Ikhine, who has been to more than 20 braiders in her life, said Dixson is the best braider she’s ever been to.

When Gideon-Ikhine, 23, leaves Dixson’s hair braiding salon, she feels like a brand-new person. The last time she got her hair done she said she felt like “that girl” and related heavily to the lyrics in Beyonce’s new song “Alien Superstar.”

She said she loves getting the whole experience that Dixson provides — the privacy of the one-room studio, the snacks and drinks, the TV, and the hair washing, which she said is not a typical service a hair braider provides.

Dixson also has hair extensions to add into the braids, which clients get to pick from her stock instead of having to buy them outside and bring them in.

“A lot of the braiders in this city, it’s just styling,” Dixson said. “I don’t know of any salon that you can walk into right now where you can get your hair shampooed and have your extensions already prepared for you when you walk in.”

While offering just the braiding service is cheaper, part of the reason some of Dixson’s clients continue booking is because of the experience she provides in addition to the braiding.

Gideon-Ikhine said she considers her visits self-care because of the spa-like treatment she receives. The whole week leading up to her appointment, she thinks about it.

“Nothing compares,” she said.

Using TikTok to get clients and educate

Dixson's experience and knowledge don’t just stick out to her clients in the chair, but also her TikTok followers, some of which are potential customers.

Dixson said about 80% of her clientele found her on TikTok before booking an appointment. Some of them already live in the city, such as Brown, who saw her stitch braids and said, “I wish we had somebody like this in Indianapolis,” before realizing she was.

Others saw her on the social media app before ever setting foot in Indiana, such as clients who drove from Chicago and Cincinnati just for her services. Gideon-Ikhine saw Dixson on her TikTok For You Page a few months before moving permanently from Texas to Indiana. She loved how Dixson would talk about her customers’ hair with respect and passion. Gideon-Ikhine set a reminder with an alarm for the day Dixson’s schedule opened for April so she wouldn’t miss her opportunity to book an appointment.

“I was on top of it,” Gideon-Ikhine said.

Dixson’s posts on the app vary from hair transformations to explainer videos about cultural appropriation in the styling business. In her voiceovers, she talks to stylists, her clients and those just looking to get more information on what she does.

She also posts about ways she’s changed in her technique and product use since she began styling. In one video she shows a product she used to use, generic brand hair oil, and then holds up the product she now uses, which is Wild Growth hair oil.

“Even though I’m licensed there’s a lot about textured & black hair that we’re NOT taught,” the caption reads, “I’m always learning and changing!!!"

Some of the posts feature recurring clients, such as two younger sisters, who she identifies in the videos as “TikTok’s favorite little siblings,” who are the only children Dixson now services. As she skillfully executes lemonade braids and adds colorful beads onto the ends of their hair, she talks about how she works with the kids and teaches them about their braids.

In her last video with the kids, she allowed “big sis” to take down her sister’s hair and in the voiceover talks about how taking the hair down gently is important.

“You can’t treat it like a delicate flower putting it up and then rip through it like garden weeds taking it down,” she said in the video.

Disparity in hair education

Dixson said braiding and working with textured hair is something she had to work on after she got her cosmetology license because she didn't get much practice with it in school.

This isn’t just a problem at Dixson’s school. Arthur Harris, founder and owner of Textures Institute of Cosmetology, said many cosmetology schools do not prioritize textured hair care.

“A lot of schools have teachers who don’t really do textured hair, don’t know anything about it. So, they’re kind of afraid and they don’t teach it,” he said. “It’s in the curriculum, it’s just that they are not confident to be able to teach it properly.”

Indiana hair braiders are not required to have a cosmetology license, a change that was made in 2017. However, hair braiders could benefit from education on how to properly take care of the hair, said Greg Kenny Sr., member of the State Board of Barbering and Cosmetology and CEO and founder of Kenny's Academy of Barbering. Kenny believes that hair braiders should have some oversight before doing work on the general public.

Textures Institute, The Fuqua Institute of Beauty Culture and The Vocational College have the three African-American-run cosmetology schools in Indianapolis. Black-owned school Kenny's Academy of Barbering will start its first cosmetology courses on September 12.

This problem extends outside of Indiana.

In June 2021, Louisiana became the first state to require cosmetology students to learn how to cut textured hair to receive their license. Black celebrities and models, such as model Leomie Anderson and actress and comedian Yvette Nicole Brown, have taken to social media to show how some makeup artists and stylists don’t know how to work with Black models' hair or skin tones.

Harris said that while it is becoming less common, Black people still experience getting turned away in salons because the establishments don’t have people that can braid or work with their hair type.

Harris said this is why he opened his school in 2010 — to teach people how to work with all hair types and be able to do many different styles.

“Education,” he said, "is definitely the key."

Fixing the problem at the roots

While TikTok does bring in clients, which was Dixson’s original goal when she started posting hair videos on the platform, it also gives Dixson the opportunity to educate people on hair, hair products and how to work with African American hair.

Dixson said her main goal with educating her TikTok audience is to get them to feel more at ease about doing their hair at home, without a stylist.

“Sometimes I feel the need to inspire other artists to be more inclusive or to inspire just change overall in the industry," she said. "But really, I want it to be the everyday person who goes and gets their hair done to feel comfortable.”

Dixson has aspirations to open a salon with inclusive stylists and cosmetologists and eventually move on to become an educator of future cosmetologists and stylists.

While Dixson learned a lot in cosmetology school, the lessons mainly focused on caring for straight hair, not textured or curly hair. Dixson said every Friday at school an owner of a salon would speak to the students. Only one of those speakers owned a curly-hair salon.

Dixson said she wants to help revamp the entire industry by getting involved in the creation of cosmetology textbooks, the selection of mannequins and just what lessons are taught in cosmetology schools as a whole.

“I would love to revamp the entire industry, just from the inside out, or just help because I know I can’t do it single-handedly,” she said.

Right now, she is focused on using her social media to help her clients, both in her studio and on TikTok. But she hopes that by creating a well-known platform, this will help springboard her to collaborate with higher-ups to shake up the cosmetology industry and make it more diverse.

“On social media, when people are just protesting about things or speaking about those things, that’s just one level,” she said. “You really got to get to the head of the stake and that’s what I would like to get to.”

Contact IndyStar reporter Madison Smalstig at MSmalstig@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis TikTok stylist offers braiding experience, education