Consider my credentials: smart, raised a poor but practical Irish girl, rigorously trained in the hairdressing profession, but veering from there to the liberal arts. Generally loyal, but I have to confess that I have been what is known in the hair industry as a shop-hopper: a customer who jumps from salon to salon in search of the perfect hairdresser. We shop-hoppers are looking for the person who will help us re-capture the look we had on our first pictorial driver’s license, the one we saved for sentimental reasons but now tend to avoid. To fully reclaim that look would require surgery and the lustrous locks of a twenty-five year old, of course; but shop-hoppers never own up to the limitations of our own hair. Instead, we focus on the real or imagined inadequacies of our current hairdresser.
Before that happens we are hopeful. Our new hairdresser woos us during that first visit, spending whatever time it takes: blowing, touching, cajoling with mousse and spray to get exactly the right effect.
Six months later this wonderful person overprocesses your foil frost, and co-workers remark that your usually golden tresses are now, well, brassy. At this time he/she trims an inch and a half, instead of the half-inch you requested. Or perhaps at home you notice one side of your hair is longer than the other, and this is not the first time you’ve noticed this. You’re just tired of the fact that Sylvia can’t ever manage to rinse the suds from the nape of your neck. It’s beginning to piss you off how Ricardo is forever running late, and there you sit with your wet head in a towel for twenty minutes.
These are all good reasons to consider a new hairdresser or to have a good sit down with the one that you have. But shop-hoppers do not divorce their hairdressers for sensible reasons. We leave because we have outrageously stubborn fantasies about our hair.
I found Gina, my current stylist, the same way I discovered all my previous ones. I walked up to a woman on the street and asked, “Who cuts your hair?”
