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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

Master weaver's back in town

by

20100220

It's of­fi­cial; mas­ter hair weaver Clem Lue Yat has re­turned to his home­land to do what he does best: great hair. "I al­ways want­ed to come back to Trinidad to re­tire," Lue Yat told Wom­an­Wise. But af­ter at­tend­ing his moth­er's 90th birth­day cel­e­bra­tions here last year, the 60-plus-year-old hair­dress­er de­cid­ed that the time had come for him to stay. His new sa­lon in Pe­tit Val­ley, Clem Lue Yat, is very ex­clu­sive, work­ing on­ly by re­fer­ral from his pre­ferred clients. All the treat­ments of­fered at the Clem Lue Yat & Styling Team sa­lon in Flat­bush, New York, are al­so of­fered lo­cal­ly. And clients get per­son­al treat­ment from the mas­ter him­self. From sham­poo­ing to colour­ing to weaves, Lue Yat does every­thing him­self.

Lue Yat be­gan his hair ca­reer at age 13, and is best known for his work with weaves, es­pe­cial­ly for his unique In­ter­lock­ing Hair Weave Sys­tem, Wrap Net Weav­ing Sys­tem and his cus­tom-made hair loss re­place­ment sys­tem. He's been a cham­pi­on of weav­ing since jer­ri curls were all the rage, and weav­ing has out­last­ed that and many oth­er hair fads, he said. Lue Yat is pos­i­tive that lace front wigs will not re­place weav­ing ei­ther. For one thing, re­al­ly good hu­man hair lace fronts cost be­tween US$7000 to $15,000, so you'd need some se­ri­ous cash to look just like Be­y­onc�. And es­pe­cial­ly for Caribbean wear­ers who are bat­tling harsh­er el­e­ments and need more hair ver­sa­til­i­ty, lace fronts may not be the best long term op­tion.

"Many women tried out the wigs and went right back to weav­ing," he said, adding that if the wig isn't re­moved night­ly or if the wear­er sweats heav­i­ly, the wa­ter-based glue or dou­ble-sided tape that se­cures the wig will de­tach. "Many of those stars who wear lace fronts have hair­dressers to main­tain their wigs for them. And you can't go swim­ming in a wig, but you can in a weave." Since his re­turn, Lue Yat has main­tained a heavy teach­ing sched­ule with sem­i­nars, work­shops and class­es with lo­cal sa­lons and in­sti­tu­tions to up­grade the skill base of lo­cal hair­dressers.

"My dream has al­ways been for lo­cal hair­dressers to learn from me and know every­thing they can about dif­fer­ent hair tech­niques," Lue Yat said. "Many peo­ple think that hair­dress­ing is a bed of ros­es or good way to make a quick buck, but if you don't love this work, you won't do well." Anne Ram­samooj-Ma­habir, cos­me­tol­ogy co­or­di­na­tor at the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty's Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps (CCC) and beau­ty cul­ture tu­tor at UWI's Open Cam­pus raved about Lue Yat's tu­tor­ing of the CCC trainees. He does three work­shops with them each cy­cle (a cy­cle last about four and a half months), she said, shar­ing his hair tips and tricks with the class­es free of charge. He's al­so done ses­sions with the beau­ty cul­ture class she runs at Cari­pachia­ma Se­nior Sec­ondary and al­so demon­strat­ed prop­er hair care on an hour-long show with a lo­cal TV sta­tions.

Along with his sa­lon and teach­ing work, Lue Yat al­so grant­ed a hair fran­chise to Pure Holis­tic (In­ter­na­tion­al) Health and Beau­ty Spa Ltd, an ex­clu­sive mem­bers-on­ly day spa that ad­dress­es the needs of the mind, body and spir­it. The spa is due to open in March and will of­fer a se­lect col­lec­tion of 100 per cent nat­ur­al, botan­i­cal, elite brand and state-of-the art in­ter­na­tion­al hair and beau­ty re­tail prod­ucts. Spa di­rec­tor Sonya said: "We are very ho­n­oured to be the first spa to have a Clem Lue Yat and his Styling team fran­chise sa­lon. He is tru­ly a mas­ter of hair and we're for­tu­nate to have him on board."


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