How Do You Find a New Hairdresser?

When do you give up on a hairdresser?

At what point do you say “that’s it. I’ve had enough!” and begin the search anew for the perfect hairdresser?

I’ve always had a great head of hair. Thick. Coarse. Naturally curly.

In my younger days I could go to a Haircuttery without fear because, hey, if it wasn’t the greatest cut, I had such awesome hair that I could hide it well. But man, if I found a good hair stylist, my hair wouldn’t need ANYTHING.. That’s how I could always tell a great cut. It would look totally amazing no matter what I did: curly, straightened, wet. Carlos, my stylist back in Rochester Hills Michigan was one such stylist and always did a killer job with my hair.

Of course I’m older now. And, since the tender age of 26 I’ve been steadily going grey necessitating not only a cut but a color as well.

I was thirty years old when I moved to the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia.

I looked high and low for a good colorist for over ten years in Philly. Every single colorist seemed to think I should be a strawberry blonde.

I am not a strawberry blonde. I am an auburn-haired redhead.

So, every time I got my hair colored it would look fairly decent for a week or so and then degrade into this awful straw colored stuff. I experimented with home coloring but, again, didn’t quite get what I wanted.

Then, lo and behold, one day my regular – adequate – hairdresser was on vaction from Millennium, the salon I frequented. I made an appointment with a guy by the name of Jimmy.

He was edgy, obnoxious and filled with tales of the beautiful women he had dated – despite the fact that he was quite apparently gay. But … MY HAIR! I left with the perfect shade of auburn with delicious highlights. Who cared if I wasn’t overly fond of the guy’s personality?!

Fifteen years after arriving in Philadelphia, I had finally found the hairdresser of my dreams!

I gladly paid the salon’s utterly exorbitant rates and attitudes up the kazoo for hair so sublime!

Then, after only three visits, disaster struck. Apparently Jimmy had been on parole for a drug offense and landed back in the slammer.

Back to square one.

And it looked as though I were doomed to strawberry blonde forever until the day I stumbled across my current hairdresser at a nifty, far less expensive salon near my home.

She understood! She knew her reds!!!! SHE GOT THE COLOR JUST LIKE JIMMY!!! (turned out she had roomed with Jimmy in her beauty school days)

The cuts, again, were merely adequate. Always even, but nothing spectacular.

So I settled for adequate cuts and spectacular color and highlights.

But today I sit before the computer with quite possibly the second worse haircut of my life.

It is longer on one side than the other. There is a chunk of hair on the top of my head that is 1” long and almost impossible to style. In fact, my entire head appears to consist of “chunks” of hair totally unrelated to one another.

I asked for a quarter inch trim.

A quarter of an inch.

When she was finished she said “I put in some layers.”

I didn’t ask for layers. I didn’t even get layers.

I got chunks.

I’m so aggravated right now that even the glorious color is little compensation. I’m wondering if this is some sort of revenge because I don’t agree with her Right-wing Faux News political views (although I am very careful to steer clear of politics).

And, given that haircuts are not her forte’, I’m thinking that this will be the last time that she cuts my hair.

Back to square one. Again.

One Response to “How Do You Find a New Hairdresser?”

1. Donna Steinhorn says:

   August 26, 2009 at 7:22 am

   Ah..the search for the perfect hairdresser, like the search for the perfect handbag, is almost a lifelong pursuit, since neither lasts forever.

   I finally learned that the perfect colorist is likely not the perfect haircutter. Lucky for me, I found both in the same salon.

   I started by literally stopping women on the street and in the mall whose hair I liked (and who had hair that looked the same texture as mine) asking them who they went to and for how long (because I had learned that a stylist may give a good haircut once, and never be able to duplicate it again.) I found one that I liked who gave a great cut, but like you, the color was not that great. I persisted.

   One day, in dire need of both and about to leave on a trip, my husband suggested (for the thousandth time) that I try the place he had been going for a cut for over a year. Not really trusting his opinion re a stylist, but desperate, I called and they had an opening for both a cut and color. And lo and behold they were FABULOUS. Go figure.

   Good luck on your hunt (if you’re willing to trek to Central NJ do I have a salon for you.)