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The lowest moment I have experienced in the chair of a hairdresser came shortly after a break. I had gone with the idea that it wanted a less feminine appearance than my straight hair and even the shoulders. I thought that a radical change would reflect my new freedom: it was an independent woman, hitting on my own. And then I requested a broken and trimmed thing that had no business in my head. I would have adapted to someone Gamine, with a small and mischievous nose. Looking back, I find my difficult decision to understand since I also embarked on a wave of casual heterosexual dates at that time. Even during the haircut, while I faced myself in the mirror, I could see what should have been obvious from the beginning: the new harvest made me look like a dove.
The hairdresser, a harassed woman who wears the black hair Raven, to the waist, was in the middle of the cut at that stage. One side of my head was the complete dove. The other side had a longer and more suggestive layer to cut. I didn’t look much better, but I clung: the ghost of my old hairstyle. I remember saying something like: “I’m not sure of this cut, actually.” Then I slipped from the chair and hurried in the midst of his protests. I had a prepaid for the experience on a website that allowed me to buy the best offers in all of London. This was how I found hairdressers at the time (this is a very bad way to find a hairdresser). I spent the following week in denial, in the place with approximately two thirds of a haircut, trying to look in the mirror as little as possible. It was like the experience of being bankrupt and trying to avoid the view of his bank balance. I knew the truth but, if I didn’t have to see it, I could pretend things were different.
It wasn’t just that the haircut made my face look bad. What made this experience so horrible is that a haircut makes a statement about the personality and life of one. It was supposed to make me seem carefree. He had wanted to be the type of woman who is a louche and elegant silence. A woman who didn’t need makeup, who barely needed hair. But I was not that kind of woman and never would be. Instead, I looked carved. And also, he feared, a little tense; as someone who had short hair for reasons of practicality or cleaning or similar. I felt paranoid that people could say what they wanted, and I could judge the difference between that and, well, me.
That experience taught me that you can never expect a new haircut to give you a different face or personality. I think, deep down, somehow I imagined I could. I remember, once, sitting in the chair of a hairdresser in Belfast and showing a photo of Nico to show that he wanted the layers to frame my face, as well as a strip. The hairdresser said: “I can do your hair like this but your face will never look like this.” In fact, I could see my own reaction to this in the mirror; My face deflated as if someone had reduced one of those explosive pets he uses to announce car dealers with a pair of scissors.
You have to work with what you have. And all that paloma debacle made me think more seriously about what it really was. What did he want to make a haircut for me? I wanted it to be flattering (we all do it), to adapt to my lifestyle and express what I liked of my personality. Someone in another phase of life might want to convey authority or professionalism. I remember that when we finished the university, many of my friends had their long hair cut in elegant Bobs when they began to graduate. A little later, more comfortable in their roles, most have grown them. I wanted to look interesting, creative. And the cut had to do this without being silly or crazy. Nothing that can evoke bowls or tudors.
I grew the trimmed disorder and turned dark blond and even shoulders again for a while. But he didn’t feel good. It was bored. So there were more challenged experiments with stripes and layers, which proved more maintenance than I really had energy. Sometimes I was going to cut my strip and sit looking in the mirror while shrinking until I became Willy Wonka by Johnny Depp.
The strip was. My hair felt bored again. The obvious solution was to go to a lighter blonde, but he had been blonde when he was a teenager and associated it with Smirnoff ICE and the clothes I favored at that time: heels with shorts and blazers, and the like.
The lighter blonde, also remembered, was even more maintenance than the margin. Once when I dyed myself, I accidentally did the same type of white orange as CORONATORY STREETLes Battersby. I fell to a coloreist in apprentices in Belfast and he nodded. “Let me try a solution,” he said. He spent hours inserting small reflections of blonde gray to “take off the bite.” I remember his forensic precision, his stoicism, his generosity. Above all I remember as one day, I felt very grateful to be in the chair. In the end, for his credit, he looked wonderful. It was a surprising ash blonde tone that took my eyes. The rate was £ 5 and I proposed £ 30. I often regret not having given more.
He spent a lot of time before he felt a sense of gratitude in the chair. Not until I found my current hairdresser, through a recommendation of a glamorous and aspirational woman who knows the so -called Kish. This is the correct way to find a hairdresser, and now it seems so obvious: if you want a good stylist, ask an elegant person with excellent hair. I arrived at the chair after one of the blockages. I had been cutting my hair myself and sometimes I cut my pieces. In fact, I don’t know what I thought I was doing. Perhaps he felt, during that gloomy time, as entertainment. A creative exit.
The hairdresser picked up a street lump and apologized. “You did the best you could,” he said. And there was, a feeling that I didn’t know that he had longed for the chair: understanding. Kindness. We discussed the shape of my face and what I wanted: the Jaudos pieces left, not too short. We set out in layers, in layers and in the center. After some sessions, I trusted him enough to trust that I worried that my hair was a bit boring. Together we decided on the solution. No light blonde but a soft orange. It was a tone unusual enough to be my characteristic color, which made sense with my blue -peechas and blue eyes. The roots are also much less noticeable. Maintenance actually adapts to my real life.
I had not realized his power until recently. I was talking to my friend, who is a poet. She described both of us as “dramatic hair.” I have been changing the words in my mind since then. I never had to be a woman who adapted to a louche harvest. But I have something better: a hairstyle that is really, truly me.
Rachel Connolly is the author of Lazy City, published by Canygated at £ 9.99