Breakdown of Lei si è fatta tingere i capelli e fare la piega.
lei
she
e
and
fare
to do / to make
il capello
the hair
farsi
to have something done (to oneself)
la piega
the styling, the blowout
tingere
to dye
Questions & Answers about Lei si è fatta tingere i capelli e fare la piega.
Why do we use è (from essere) instead of ha (from avere) for the verb fare here?
This is the core rule of the reflexive causative construction! Normally, the verb fare takes avere. However, because she is having the action done for herself, we use the reflexive pronoun si. In Italian, any compound tense that uses a reflexive pronoun automatically shifts to require essere as its auxiliary verb.
Why does the past participle change to fatta instead of staying fatto?
Whenever a verb takes essere in a compound tense like the passato prossimo, its past participle must agree with the subject in gender and number. Since the subject is Lei (feminine singular), the participle fatto changes to fatta.
The English translation uses the past words dyed and styled, so why does Italian use the infinitives tingere and fare?
English uses the structure to have an object done, but the Italian causative structure is always fare followed by an infinitive. The verb fare carries the tense (here, the past tense si è fatta), while the actions actually being performed always remain in the infinitive form, which gives us tingere and fare.
Why does the verb fare appear twice in this sentence, once as fatta and once as fare?
The first one, fatta, is the causative verb used to express that she had a service done for her. The second one, fare, is part of the specific action she had done: fare la piega. While la piega literally means the fold or the crease, fare la piega is the standard Italian expression for styling or blow-drying hair.
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