Nowadays, professionals say it’s common to maximize your style by transforming one look to three or four more. “I come from an era where girls were getting their hair done on a weekly basis with no problem,” says celebrity stylist Antonio Wright Thigpen. “Now that the economy has changed so much, you kind of want to give clients something that they can deal with a little bit longer.”

Here, Thigpen takes R&B songstress Teairra Mari, who released Sincerely Yours, a digital EP via iTunes this summer, from glam to funky to playful to classic, each style starting with a ponytail he created with extensions.