Episode 72 - How I Chose a Stylist After Moving Many Times

Finding the right stylist for your specific hair type and color is not an easy task. In this episode I’ll share some insights to find the right person for your needs. 

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Transcription

Hello everybody welcome back to the alopecia Angel podcast I am your host Johanna Dahlman and today we’ll be talking about how I choose a stylist and a colorist, having moved 10 times. And when I say that I've moved 10 times, I've moved outside of countries, outside of continents, to different states and all over the place.

I think I’ve lived in four different continents at this moment. As of yet I've lived in over five different countries and ever expanding. Even here in the US I've lived in probably one two three four different states and so, it’s a process having to find a colorist, it's a process having to find a stylist that you trust that you want to go back to, that you want to say “okay this is my home-based stylist”, “this is my home-based colorist” and a lot of times I judge the salon by what products they carry, and this also allows me to see what level they're at and what potentially caliber they're at.

In the US there's different tiers of quality, especially when it comes to hair color and stylist and salons and this and that and also with those different tiers right there's different pricing. I also gauge on the pricing I also gauge on the experience that they have and I ask questions so for example: for the last let's say five six years I was living in the Europe. Right now I live in Japan but in Europe it took me a while to find my person who would do my hair color correctly.

Cutting curly hair is very different and so the process to find somebody to cut my curly hair versus someone to color my hair and just give me highlight is also very different. In any case let's just stick to coloring because that normally applies to everybody but in case of a color, I like to see what products they hold and that they carry in in store in the salon.

I like to see how many years of experience they have and what exactly do they do well is it coloring reds? is it highlighting? is it a scene the brown hair? or what those results look like, if they have an Instagram and Facebook, I like to see that before and afters of their clientele, I love looking at that reviews help but that's not always possible.

Let's say in Europe there's not a lot of different types of review systems or review online sites or salons or for establishment locations for people who do your hair and color and cut etc. So in Europe that reviews in general don't necessarily work. Google reviews may work but if you're lucky, you'll you'll see one or two.

So, a lot of it comes from your intuition, a lot of it comes from you asking questions, a lot of it also comes from you having that consultation and then also seeing the type of people that are in the salon and what are they getting done.

In Europe and especially in the Netherlands going blonde was very easy because everyone is blonde. Everyone is getting their colored hair blonde. You're not going to see a lot of reds, you're not going to see a lot of darks maybe some brown hairs here and there but there’s a lot of blondes.

It just predominates, so I felt very comfortable getting my hair down there. Did I have issues? Yes I think the first person I went to the salon was fantastic, the ambiance, the products, they even carried similar products to what I was using and at the same time the girls still fried my hair. She left it on too long but she was also a newbie and even though she loved doing highlights and she said she had all this experience, it just shows in the work right, it just shows when you're an amateur, it shows in the work so I didn't go back to her.

I went to other salons and you know a lot of times it's trial and error a lot of times it's going to one salon, then another and seeing what fits, and I went to this one salon where I was living and the guy had trained in Italy and he also spoke fabulous English.

He had been to California many times, he had curly hair like me, he was blonde, not naturally but kind of naturally, and he knew color really well, but not just him but also the staff and the environment. Everyone knew and had really good high level knowledge and education about color and how to do it, what to do, how long to leave it, when to check up on me.

Customer service is really big thing for me. This is why I love to also provide a huge customer service, but when it comes to my hair I'm sure you would be in agreement that customer service is huge. If they're offering you water coffee tea, this is important to me ,if you’re not, then then it's not the same experience. That’s also important to me because I don't want to settle for a low budget salon, I really don’t, it's not the type of environment that I want to subscribe to, and in the other sense of it, if I wanted low budget like I could easily get that anywhere, but what are those results going to look?

So, when I think of you know just finding any Salon that's open, I think of my toddler's haircut. He can get his hair cut anywhere, because it doesn't matter if they leave one side a little bit longer than the other or if it's not absolutely perfect, it’s okay because it's just a cut. It’s not color.

As you know it, you could leave orange and it could be brassy in a few days. The toner maybe is not right, it could wash you out there's so many different variables when it comes to color. In the industry, the say that you could fix color very easily, but at the same time as the customer, I'm also thinking that it may look like a double process or a multi a multi-layered level process of doing your color and that's something that I want to avoid because then you are messing with the Integrity of your hair and you're messing with the integrity and the quality of your hair.

What's the point of having a good color at the cost of so many processes? You're damaging your hair in the long run. So, we want to also maintain the Integrity, so these are things and like the thought process of the stylist and the colorist. These are things that I look for when I'm choosing a new colorist.

When it comes to haircuts I I only go with people who are really knowledgeable with curly hair. In my experience over the last 40 Years of having curly hair, I think I found one person who does it correctly, who does it right, and she was trained under Ouidad, a flagship in New York.

My girl Morgan has been cutting my hair for the last 10 years. Literally, I've I've grown up with her and her child, and I've seen her grow and flourish. She is a master at cutting curly hair and she never leaves me wrong, she never does me wrong and so at this point now I just get my hair cut whenever I see her or whenever I'm in California because I just don't trust other people even when other people may recommend it.

I only do the ouidad style and that's the only style that I want and so you also have to be careful though, because a lot of this is also on franchises. For example, I ended up being in Minnesota this one summer and I needed a haircut badly and I found a ouidad person online who has been trained to do it in Minnesota, but this person didn't do a good job. They did an okay-mediocre job and it just wasn't with the same confidence or the same day in day level as Morgan.

Morgan does this every and she's been doing this for over years and decades. She's a pro at cutting curly hair in a specific way that leaves it just perfect, it really does. It's better than the dry method, she actually cuts it wet.

In any case this guy said “oh I haven't cut in this style in over five years” and I was just like “oh my gosh, red flag” . This is a problem because even if they're trained, they might not be used to this training, it may not be doing it on a normal basis and so this is where the experience level is very important. If you're a red and you want a nice, let’s say, maroon red, how often do they do that You would think “oh it's very easy to slap on some paint and and be done” but it's not, you want to make sure it gets in there, you want to make sure all the grays are covered.

It's a process, the same with highlights. You can butcher highlights really easily and this is this is something that I look for and I want to ask questions, I want to see reviews if there are reviews, but I don't guide myself 100% by them. I also kind of go for a consultation, sit in the chair, talk to them and and once I start talking to them, once I start asking questions, then I feel very confident and I feel much more confident in the owners because the owners actually have more experience than the people they've hired. This is very normal and so for example, there was one lady who I went to towards the end of my time in Europe, and she owned the salon. She he was my age so she had over 20 years experience with color. She had long curly hair like down to her knees, almost curly hair. It was extraordinary to see this long curly hair, quite impressive.

She colored it red but even in her own coloring, she kind of botched it at sometimes because it was like an orangey red and so then that just kind of like leads you to think okay well what’s going?, who’s doing her hair? it's probably somebody else who's there because maybe she doesn't color her own hair. She left it fantastic each time, and so it's one of those things where it's a combination of research, reviews, asking questions, seeing them in person, first seeing how confident they are when they speak, how confident they are in their knowledge and what they would do. Another thing I would like to say is like I’ll sit in the chair and be like “Okay so, I'll take out my clip of my hair and be like okay what would you do what would you recommend you know I have these situations, I've got gray hairs poking out here and here and then of course I have my dark base and then of course I want the highlights what would you do?”

Getting this feedback and having them assess my hair before having us talk about a strategy is a beautiful thing. It’s just kind of like the free call that people get when before you sign up for the Hair N’ Heal program, you want to see how confident I am in your situation with your child, with you and your case and your hair loss.

The feelings that I get are important, the emotions that you know come up are important as well because that's my intuition guiding me to say yeah this is a person I can trust ,them or him doesn't matter. I am very loyal to my colorist, to my hair cutter Morgan as you know, and even my colorist back in California. I’ve been seeing him since I've 13. he's the one who diagnosed me with alopecia, he's the one who I go back and see every time I'm back in California. It’s just a loyalty thing, even though right now I live in Japan, I haven't found the person yet.

I'm really hesitant because everyone here has black hair, everyone here has really dark brown, dark black hair and yes, I've seen a lot of Japanese with blonde and pink and purple and green hair and all these other neat things and I'm still hesitant.

I'm still hesitant because apparently where I live it's not super common to see a lot of blondes. I stick out not just because of my height but I stick out because of the hair color and I'm not so confident.

I try my process and I found a Brazilian lady not too far away from me, who does blondes, that’s all she does, all she works with is getting people to be blonde and so I was like “okay let's give her a try”. This was around christmas time, December of last year I tried it and she fried my hair and she also cut my hair a little too much.

But it's okay hair grows back no big deal and after that experience and also the the long train ride, the actual transportation, the ease and convenience of it was not there, the ease and convenience of having to sit in her chair for three hours was not there. It didn't meet my standards, not her, not her technique, not her Salon, nothing. So, I refuse to go back. I’ve tried to find other people to do my hair but I'm just gonna hold tight until I get back to the states because I just don’t. I don’t trust, I don't want to butcher my hair, I don't want them to fry it.

It takes on to the color quickly so like in 20 minutes my highlights are done they're already lifted, you don't need three hours in a chair and this is the type of situation that I actually came across with a functional medicine doctor who did my program.

She was sitting in a chair in California at an Aveda Salon. Aveda for those of you who know is a very natural product line but they also have salons in determined areas. She was sitting there and she has the black Asian hair and for those of you who maybe don't know that when you have black Asian hair and you're trying to go blonde or when you're trying to get highlight you have to have the product which is the bleach sit there longer and I don't know what type of coloring she was getting done but they left it on too long and she saw massive clumps as they were rinsing out the color, as they were rinsing out her hair and shampooing and all that.

She left that Salon with absolute hair loss she said she lost over 60% percent of hair loss she recently did my program. She's still in the program and you know it's one of those things where you know even her as a functional medicine doctor, she goes to an expert, she goes to somebody who knows what she's doing to help the hair loss because it's not a one size fits all approach. It's very different and so being mindful of these things, being mindful of how you’re getting your color done can leave you in a worse shape than before.

I think at the end at the end of the day the most important is the trust you have with your stylist, with your colors, the trust you have with the person, with their knowledge base ,with their technique, with their strategy and with their experience.

Experience counts, would I choose somebody who has over 20 years experience doing color versus somebody who who just got out of Cosmetology Schoo? No I'd go with the somebody who who's been doing it for 20 years so I think that's where I stand and also look around in the environment.

Where I live in Japan there aren't a lot of blondes, there aren't a lot of highlights there aren't a lot of these types of things, so this also tells me that the experience level isn't there because it's not in the market. If there’s not t's not in the market, there's not a need to know how to do it.

Maybe because it's in a textbook but that's just like going to a doctor and saying “Oh yeah, you got alopecia but guess what? my textbook says there's no cure”. Coming to Japan and trying to get your highlights done when no one here is wearing highlights no one here is blonde and you know getting that experience and then trying to find somebody with that experience, it parallels in many ways and it also parallels to other professions.

When you're looking for a professional for different things like accounting or, day cares, maybe legal services or a tax person or anything else that you may need, there's a lot more questions and it's not a one-size-fits-all. One tax person let's say for expats is going to be different for somebody who's just local or let's say if your business is in the UK that also requires a different type of tax person because it’s the UK and so it's not just “Oh I just do taxes and so I can do it for everybody”

The same this happens when it comes to colorists, when it comes to stylists the same thing happens, when it comes to people who cut hair, not everyone knows how to cut curly hair and I say this because I've had my hair butchered so many times where I've looked like poodles too many times that I didn't want to. Now I advocate for myself, even in the chair I advocate for myself.

I talk to them before they even grab their tools, their brushes or even their scissors, especially because I won't allow that to happen anymore. I love long hair and that's the goal for me, to grow it out as long as possible and to have it healthy as healthy as can be with highlights.

As you know when you color your hair, there’s loss of Integrity especially with bleach. Bleach damages the hair, I know that, but at the same time I love the look. You got to do what's possible for you, and maybe ease into it little by little, but then also maintain the health and rejuvenation of your hair.

I hope this helps you see my process when I try to find colorist, when I try to find somebody who who needs to get the work done for me in various countries or in various cities. I’m always going to try to go for somebody who who has the experience and knows what they're doing. Coloring is quite easy compared to let's say cutting curly hair cutting curly hair if you have curly hair I'd say find a salon focus on cutting curly hair.

I found one actually in Amsterdam which was fantastic they did a really good job and you know it's these type of specialty areas that you're going to want to go to, and you know to focus on your type of hair.

For those of you with kinky coily hair or african american hair or a different type of texture hair this is important as well. It is important to find somebody who knows how to treat that hair and how to treat different textures and different types of hair. Even if you have straight Japanese hair, there's only certain people who know how to treat this hair and you might as well go with the expert instead of trying to go with somebody who says they can do it, because that doesn't mean they have the experience behind them.

Go with somebody who knows, who's treated and has experience. You need to ask those questions and be an advocate for yourself.

So that's my process, I hope this helps, I hope this brings up ideas and brings up ways of how you can move forward with confidence to select your next color, a stylist person who's going to cut your hair, because hair is important. As we know hair is your crown, hair is everything for me. Of course there’s my health, but it's everything and in order to get the hair, you need the health, it goes hand in hand. But then, once you've healed and you want a color, then these are also ways on how to do this especially if you do move or if you, let's say on vacation you want to get your hair done and this is also tricky, because you want to be confident that you're going to be left beautiful, that you're going to be laughing and feeling good about your hair.

Every time I leave Morgan or Marcos, Marcos is my stylist back in California every time I leave Marcos or Morgan I feel like a million dollars. I feel on top of the world. I feel like Diana Ross coming out of the salon and I love it because Marcos knows me, and he knows how I like my hair.

He knows I love the big 80s poofy hair, I love that man. Some of you might be laughing at this moment but at the same time, this is what I love. I love big curly hair and I love it on me especially. It’s a beautiful thing when you can have that trust and I think that's the loyalty factor too. I've been with Marcos since I was 13. So, once you find somebody you know, be loyal because he's like family. He knows my whole family, he's done I think everyone's hair at some point and so it's more than loyalty, but also you know what you're getting and this is very important too. It's a no-brainer, it really is. If you want that experience, it's going to come with a price tag, and yes he’s increased his rates as he should, but that experience is worth it because I would not want to start getting my hair done with somebody who just got out of school and just became a coloring assistant just out of nowhere.

I want somebody with experience so that they don't fry my hair so that they don't mistreat my hair so that they tell me honestly what the next steps look like as my hair changes and evolves. He was doing my hair during alopecia, before alopecia and after alopecia. He’s done my hair postpartum, post covid, post everything and so if your hair does change, I'm sure it's not as it was when you were 15. I'm sure it's not as it was when you were 20. Hair does change just like our bodies. Our bodies change, they evolve, they grow, they develop, you have to make space for this and now I've got the gray hairs coming in and that’s a new phase of life.

In any case I believe that I’ve really allowed you the space to understand my process of hiring a professional in any country and in any city. Look at the market, look what it dictates, look at the environment and see if you feel confident there. From there, do the research and talk to them.

Another thing is the language barrier, when you come to to Japan there's a big language barrier for everything I just went to the doctor yesterday to see a pediatrician for my son and the language barrier is super frustrating. At the salon I can't even imagine how that would look like. I don't want to have to use Google Translate in order to get my point across because maybe if I say “gloss”, or if I say “toner”, or if I say “highlight” it looks and sounds different because of the way the Japanese hair stylist or hair colorist will interpret it.

I’ve done my hair multiple times in Europe and in different countries, even when vacationing. In Portugal, I’ve gotten it done a lot of times and people don't know how to treat curly hair and I think the majority of my listeners maybe have a split with straight hair and curly hair. At the end of the day, though, as long as you have your styles and your styling tools with you, I think you're golden and a lot of times, I've also seen that different countries also cater to different types of hair easily more easily so for example. I lived in Rio, Brazil and everyone there is a a mix between black and Native and European, and there's like this big mix. In Rio you have the most beautiful people I've ever seen. But then also you have this big mix of race. For example, if you were to go to the pharmacy or the store or the drugstore and look for shampoos and conditioners you would see maybe five different types of shampoos and five different types of conditioners from one brand just for curly hair, and they give you the picture of what type of curly hair you have and so you would have like the kinky set to like maybe the wavy hair, maybe the more European style of curly hair, maybe to the more medium like tighter curls and so on and so forth.

There’s like a progression of curl just on the shampoo from one brand and so this city, Rio, really caters to curly hair and you can find any and every product for curly hair because it's very common, there very very common in Rio when I was living there it was very easy for me to do my highlights. It’s very easy for me to do many things because they automatically knew they had that experience but here there's no curly hair in Japan, no blondes in Japan.

So those are two things that I'm just like “I'll wait” and that's okay to wait. If you're in Europe, there’s a lot of blondes but maybe not a lot of curly hair, but once you get to other places where I've been to, let’s say like Israel, then you do have a lot of curly hair there as well or you know in the Middle East there's a lot of curly hair people as well.

You also have different neighborhoods you know you have the let's say the Latino neighborhood, you also have the ethnic neighborhoods where you'll have different types of ethnicities of races, but then also salons to go with it.I hope this helps, if you have any other questions concerns or feedback let us know.

Please rate and review the podcast we would highly appreciate it so that the voice and the information goes out to anyone dealing with hair loss, anyone dealing with hair issues.

Thank you so much and take care.