A technique I'm using after doing some Blender to Hairworks testing, I'm assuming human hair.
Create simplified skull cap with a couple hundred verts. Note the amount of verts in the skull cap. Apply the particle system to the cap only, switch particle type to hair.
Click on advanced option in the particle options. Now the Emissions option is visible, set the amount of strands to the same number of verts. This will give you a single strand per vert.
Comb and cut in particle editing. Alternatively to cutting create new vertex group with 100% weighting on the inner vertices and 0% on the out edges. To use the new vertex group go back to object mode, in the particle system Vertex Groups add the new group to length.
With the skull cap still selected, go to the modifier tab and press Convert. This will give you separate mesh version of the strands. (May want to make a copy at each stage just in case).
Select the newly created strand mesh and convert it to curve ALT-C. Now you should be able to edit the strands as curves(the option just right of "modifier tab"). In the curve option - Leave Fill at half, enable "use UV for mapping", in the bevel section apply a small amount of bevel, you should see the strands thickening. You can taper the curves by creating a new Bezier curve and assign it as the taper object. Once you are happy with the shape, ALT-C to convert it back to a mesh. Since "use UV for mapping" was enabled, it already has the basic UV. May need to rotate UV 90 and or scale. Cheers