'Coronavirus hairstyle' spikes in popularity
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Hair in corona style
The coronavirus has revived a hairstyle in East Africa, one with braided spikes that echo the virus' distinctive shape.
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Spreading awareness
The style's growing popularity is in part due to economic hardships linked to virus restrictions - it's cheap, mothers say and to the goal of spreading awareness that the coronavirus is real.
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Back in trend
The hairstyle had gone out of fashion in recent years as imported real and synthetic hair from India, China and Brazil began to flood the market and demand by local women increased.
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Beauty salons
Pictures of the flowing or braided imported styles are tacked up in beauty salons across much of Africa.
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COVID hairstyle
But now, in a makeshift salon beside a busy road in Kibera, a slum in the heart of the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, 24-year-old hairdresser Sharon Refa braids young girls' hair into the antennae-like spikes that people call the "coronavirus hairstyle."