I’ve finally succumbed to the lure of protective styling. Not because it makes any sense to wear your hair in a bun every day so it can grow long enough to wear bigger buns, but because the winter cold is drying and I want to give my hair a bit of rest. And I’m lazy and don’t feel like bantu knotting it every day. My goal is to install twists for a month or two, then wear the extensions in a twist-out for a couple of weeks after. Therefore, I wanted to find the most realistic hair possible.

The woman who used to do my twists back in the day in ’02/03 (the last time I wore twists) used the best hair smoking at the time. It didn’t have the curlicue ends or look like a mop of Raggedy Ann hair on my head. Most people thought it was my real hair because it looked very natural. Although I can’t remember the brand anymore, it had to have been something like Marley hair and she was simply one of few people who used it, because I remember only the larger beauty supplies sold it. I re-researched and decided the look of The Damn Salon’s City Twists was what I was going for (but who has $300 lying around??) and found that they don’t use Marley hair… it’s a harder texture, doesn’t age well, and definitely won’t do for a twist out.

Youtube and message boards led me to the brand(s) that DS probably use, but I took my twist-out hopes into account and looked into finding kinky-looking human hair anyway. I’m hard headed. The local bss recommended several, the best of which was Bohyeme Brazilian wave (a.k.a. BoBraz.) At a price tag of $139/pack, I opted out. That’s really an option for doing a whole-head sew in (which I’ve considered for later. Who knows?)

So I was back to synthetics. The front runners were Nafy Collection, E-ON, and a newer brand called Kadi Naturals. Each of those lines has a range of textures, but it seemed that my best bet were the “puffy”/”fluffy” in each.

• E-ON has been around for longer, but criticisms of the hair quality kept popping up and it seemed that the manufacturing had changed at some point in the past couple years.
• Nafy has nothing but great reviews and is the current YouTube favorite.
• Kadi Naturals has very little feedback and is a new brand, but info is positive so far.

So I started my search. I planned on having my aunt do my hair while in Maryland for Christmas, so I tried to find either brand in the DC Metro area. It turns out that the main online retailer for Nafy ships from their store, The Beauty Supply Center in Bladensburg, MD. (They also own the brand. Nafy herself is a professional braider in nearby Largo, MD.) ?However, my navigator misread her map and initially landed me at a different store a couple blocks away, which happened to sell E-ON and Kadi Naturals brands (at $11.99/pack). ?That solved one mystery — they’re the same brand. E-ON is changing its name/packaging to Kadi Naturals, but it’s the same hair and company.

The day before, I won two packs of Kadi Naturals in a giveaway from online retailer Hattache but I knew the hair wouldn’t get to me fast enough (their shipping and service is wonderful, but it was Christmas Eve and I wanted to start the next day) so I went ahead and grabbed 2 packs of E-ON there and still went to the Beauty Supply Center and picked up 2 packs of Puffy Twist Nafy hair in 1B ($9.99/pack). I wanted to try them all! Plus the Kadi Naturals that I won is #4, so I’m going to use it for highlights later. (For the rest of this review, I’m considering E-ON/Kadi the same brand.)

Just from touch, the E-ON/Kadi hair felt a bit softer, so I decided to try that first. It comes on a weft for transportation purposes. One pack is a LOT of hair.

It’s also rather short. It stretches well, but you have to deliberately stretch it. I only wanted my twists just past shoulder length, but they couldn’t have gone any longer than that anyway. To cover the length of my real hair, we couldn’t fold the hair in half but had to make a small fold just at the top of the hair (which makes it harder to blend.) ?To make things easier on my aunt, we ran an assembly line where I cut the weft, then stretched and fluffed the hair for her.

We finished about half my head the first night. My aunt reported that it was a bit tedious blending the folds, but the hair was soft on her fingers and didn’t feel rough against my skin at all.

The next morning, I unwrapped the Nafy hair just to look at it. It was twice as long! Had I known that, I probably would’ve gone ahead and used it to begin with. It also required less work before braiding because it wasn’t on a weft, was already elongated, and could be folded right in half instead of partially blended. ?(Since my hands were finally free to type, I’m writing this as she’s braiding.)

There isn’t really much of a texture difference between the two. The Nafy is a bit shinier while the E-ON/Kadi hair has less sheen (which I prefer.) The Nafy feels slightly more coarse to the touch, but it doesn’t make a difference while braiding or against my face. It has slightly more slip so it took my aunt a bit more work to stay secured, but she isn’t a professional braider, either. If folded only partially, or not at all the Nafy puffy twist could be used for longer styles, but their Kinky Twist hair is the same texture and comes longer pre-cut. (Some YouTubers will direct you to the “puffy screw” hair; but the name was changed.)

So the verdict? You’re fine either way. If your hair is longer you’ll want to go for the Nafy hair. If your hair is shorter and/or you want a shorter just-to-shoulder style, the E-ON/Kadi is great. I would probably opt for the Nafy hair most often for braiding/twisting because of the length and ease of use. Also, a lot of people re-use their twisting hair. With all the brushing and cutting, I ended up wasting quite a bit of the E-ON and I don’t think I’ll be able to wash and reuse it. I can see that happening with the Nafy.

Looking at all this hair, I’m thinking the possibilities are kinda endless… why stop at twists? Both match my own hair texture really well. I can make my own clip extensions if I seal the wefts the E-ON comes on. And it looks fairly easy to sew loose hair onto a weft, so I can make my own longer ones out of the Nafy hair! I can use some of the hair I won to make clip-in highlights once I take my twists down! I’m all excited! So as I figure that part out, that’ll be part 2. 🙂