AUTHENTIC
Handcrafted Hair
Indique’s handcrafted process—from hand selecting the best virgin hair to individually advising clients—is unmatched in the virgin hair industry.
Indique’s virgin hair is: hand selected, handmade, individually inspected, prepared and packed to be received by our warehouse in Boston. At our corporate headquarters we then handcheck each piece, rewash our virgin hair by hand, then repackage the virgin hair bundles and either send them to our loyal clients or to our retail boutiques. At our Indique hair stores, our Boutique managers reinspect the hair and then individually advise our clients on the virgin hair bundle that matches their color, lifestyle and look.
A true virgin hair bundle must be created by hand in order to make certain that all the hair is flowing in the right direction - which is the definition of remy virgin hair. If there is any opportunity for the hair to be inverted or reversed (meaning the roots and the ends are interspersed) then the hair will become non-remy, which is a lower quality product and one that Indique does not offer. Our commitment is to produce and offer only handcrafted true virgin Indian hair from root to tip - all flowing in the same direction.
Hand selecting the best raw Indian hair or virgin hair
Indique’s products are all handcrafted with extreme care and commitment to quality. The hair for each bundle is hand selected from hundreds or kilos of raw virgin hair to make sure it abides by Indique’s high quality virgin hair standards.
Hand washing all the hand selected virgin hair
After Indique has identified the best raw hair, we wash the hair again to remove all and any impurities. Handwashing the hair will also identify hair that tangles or knots, therefore making this the first quality inspection point in our remy human hair production process. Any rejected hair is removed from production and sold as non remy hair.
Hand preparing the hair for production
After handwashing, Indique expert hair selectors choose the hair by length and texture to prepare the raw material for hand sewing. Choosing the textures is very important because we need to make sure that all the curly hair is sorted with other curly hair, wavy hair with wavy and straight hair with straight. Picking the correct lengths is critical in order to limit short hair inside the bundles and or disproportionate lengths. You don’t want and will not receive an 18” bundle of hair from Indique with the majority hair being 8-10”.
Hand Sewing the raw hair onto the machineweft or tracks: Foundation Tracks
After all the human hair is separated by our experts we begin the process of sewing the hair onto the tracks or creating what is known in the industry as a weft. This process is undertaken on a three headed sewing machine with three threads in order for the first stitch to be the most secure. At Indique our goal is to make the strongest track or weft so there is minimal if no hair strand release.
Hand Sewing with a two head machine for double reinforcement of the track: 2nd Reinforced Stitching
Once we have completed the foundational stitch that makes the track, Indique adds another quality step to the process by using a two head sewing machine to sew another 2 threads through the weft in order to reinforce the hair on the track. With each stitch and our attention to detail, Indique focuses on creating the strongest virgin hair bundles in the industry.
Hand Sewing with a single head machine for triple reinforcement of the track: 3rd Reinforcement
We sew a third and final thread through the machineweft to triple reinforce the track and make sure there is no shedding. Our Indian hair bundles have 6 threads through 3 different sewing machines making Indique's virgin hair bundles the strongest and highest quality tracks in the human hair industry.
Steam Perming Preparation – Hand Rolling the virgin hair onto Perm Rods
To produce our Bounce Collection virgin hair products, Indique uses the natural wavy hair as it’s base raw material or what we also call our Pure Collection. The hair is rolled on perm rods of varying sizes depending on the tightness of the curl pattern – if it’s a kinky curly style (our coil curl or organic curl) the rods will be smaller, and if it’s our Deep Wave or Body Wave textures then the perm rods will be bigger. This is all done by hand and requires attention to detail to make sure that the rolling of the hair onto the perm rods is all done the same way in order for all the permed virgin hair to look the same.
To achieve the Blow-Out collection we braid the hair bundles into many small braids before hand rolling them onto the perm rods. This is a very labor intensive process but one that ensures our commitment to a completely hand curated production process. Many vendors will use chemicals or other mechanical steps to produce the Blow Out or Kinky Straight textures – at Indique we do not compromise.
Steam Perming in Steam Chamber
After the Indian virgin hair is rolled onto the perm rods, the virgin hair extensions are ready to go into the steam chamber. It is important to identify that Indique does not use chemicals for perming our textured hair products. The time in the steam chamber and the temperature of the steam are very important factors that must be closely watched to make sure that the human hair does not dry out or is strong enough to produce the right permed texture. Perming the Indian hair using steam ensures that there are no chemicals or impurities added to the hair and that our clients can color our permed textures just like they can with our completely raw virgin hair extensions.
Trimming the reverse hair that is produced by the reinforced hand stitching process
The production of the tracks at the root of the hair creates an overlap that make the top of the hair flow in the opposite direction. This effectively means the hair at the track will be inverted, therefore Indique inspects each virgin hair extension and cuts this extra hair off by hand. This is an extremely labor intensive task, but it must be done to ensure the highest quality standard that we stand by and produce a tangle free remy virgin hair bundle.
Washing 2nd Time
After trimming the hair at the tracks, we need to wash the all the Indian hair again to make sure there are no loose pieces of hair within the natural hair bundles. This washing step – after the making of the tracks or machine wefted hair – ensures that any hair that any bundles with tangling or matting during after washing are removed. Remember any tangling during the washing process means that there was some inverted hair within the original raw virgin hair that we may have missed from the first washing step.
Brushing 2nd Time
Once we’ve completed the washing we brush the hair after it’s dry to remove any loose hair. We have two people brush this simultaneously on both sides of the hair bundles to make sure any and all loose hair is brushed out. This is another example of Indique’s unique and commitment to hand curated premium Indian hair.
Hand Checking Each Hair Bundle
At Indique we inspect every virgin hair bundle individually. We do not do random inspections or test one out of every ten or so pieces. Our commitment and premium hair quality requirements, makue us to check each hair bundle and inspect almost every hair to ensure that there are no impurities. We remove any gray hair, colored hair, hair with henna, or any hair that is knotting or tangling. We also make sure that we brush the hair through with our fingers - just like you do - to make sure that you only receive the highest quality hand inspected and hand produced virgin Indian hair.
Washing with Conditioner 3rd Wash for softness and luster
Once each bundle of premium Indian hair is inspected and approved and all the loose hair removed then Indique washes our virgin hair in lukewarm water containing a light conditioner. The purpose of this is to bring back some of the human hair luster and softness that may have been lost during the human hair hand production process. After the Indian hair is lightly rinsed in conditioner, we then place it outside to air dry in the warm Indian sun.
Labeling and packing our hair to be sent to our warehouse in Boston, MA
All our labels, zip ties and bows are attached by hand. It’s a painstaking process, but we do this to ensure that the entire process of production is done by hand. We don’t cut corners, and have everything prepackaged, boxed and labeled by machines that cannot catch mistakes. Every single piece is labeled by an individual person and then reinspected to by another quality inspector to make sure that the hair is labeled correctly. It also gives us one more opportunity to review the hair one last time and make sure that each hair bundle meets Indique’s premium hair checklist.