Saturday, October 6, 2012

Stressful hairdresser experience

It was time for my hair color to be renewed. Obviously this meant a difficult decision to make: where to go? Where to find a hair salon that can handle Caucasian hair?
After two weeks of asking the different salons that crossed my way and assessing how much it would cost me (a lot more than in Belgium), I decided for Essensuals.
They claim to be a spin off from Tony & Guy. Hopefully they should know what they are doing. And they use Wella products, the same as my hairdresser in Belgium. Anyway I have to go, so let's give it a shot.

Today at 4pm I had an appointment.
I got out of there at ...19:40
What happened in the meantime?

There was an assessment and alignment on the color target.
I had a cup of tea.
There was application of the color.
There was waiting while the coloring product acts.
There was washing and head massage - that was the best part of it.
There was drying and realization that the color was not what it was supposed to be. My hair were significantly more orange than expected.
The hairdresser decided to go for another round of color with more "natural tons" because my hair didn't "take well the first color". That was a bit of an understatement. I think my hair absorbed the color pretty well... it was just not the right mix.
There was color application. Again.
And little chat with the stylist. This time he did it himself instead of the color girl the first time.
This time there was chatting and I learnt how he started to work at 15, how things are getting more and more expensive which makes it harder for "local" people. I believe he thought I was some expat's wife following her husband to Singapore, loaded with money that she can spend on designers. It was quite interesting to hear how worried he is about the future and how he will manage. Strangely so far he is the first person I met in Singapore that's openly admiring that life is hard "under the surface". This touch of reality worried me a bit but at the same time put things back in perspective: Singapore like any other country has poor people struggling. Even in paradise there are poor people.
There was washing again.
And finally cutting with some discussion on how hair behave differently in new climate. By the way the color at that stage was looking much more like it should have been.
There was drying again and comments on how dry my hair are.
Almost four hours later I was looking like me with the right hair color and was leaving the place, after spending 200S$.

Note: the hairdresser mentioned three times not to wet my hair in the next 24h. Usually I take a bit of freedom with this principle but given it took so much effort and money to get to the right place, I'll keep my head dry.
And I bought a swim cap to protect my hair when I go swimming. I will look ridiculous but hopefully it will protect my expensive color.
Let's see the status in one month.

No comments: