Cancer Patients Transformed By Gorgeous Henna Dome Designs

If the best way to de-stigmatize something is to boldly put it under people’s noses, then Frances Darwin’s “Henna Heals” is making conditional female baldness both acceptable and, perhaps improbably, kind of chic.
The Toronto-based photographer’s company provides a novel service: beautiful designs applied to the smooth skulls of cancer patients who’ve lost their hair due to chemotherapy using naturally sourced henna dyes.
Using a hairless head as a canvas, henna artists hand-paint intricate and captivating designs onto the women’s scalp with the natural plant-based paste called henna.
The swirling, intricate drawings, which are safe, temporary and applied by skilled artists, command the eye to the head of the henna wearer, inspiring awe rather than pity while offering an alternative to wigs or hats.

Known as henna crowns, they take between 60 and 90 minutes for the artist to create, and the twirling patterns can simply ring the head, or extend as far down the neck and around the forehead and ears as a person desires.
Perhaps more importantly, these henna “crowns” offer women suffering hair loss — and the accompanying lost sense of femininity that brings — a chance to feel uniquely lovely while inviting gentle dialog about what can be a tricky subject.
“For cancer patients, the henna crowns really are a healing experience,” Darwin adds. “This is all about them reclaiming a part of themselves that would normally be perceived as ill or damaged or not nice to look at and making it more feminine and beautiful.”

 

Photo credit: Frances Darwin; model: Sandee Waite; henna: Tarquin Singh