Colouring hair can be a tricky business. Perception is reality, after all; one person’s “burnished copper” is another person’s “highway pylon orange”. But usually such differences of opinion are easily managed, and we are able to make the client happy with a bit of toner or a few more highlights.
Bleach, however, is a whole nother business. When bleach goes wrong it goes horribly, disasterously, catastrophically wrong. Like, “hair breaking off at the root and falling out” wrong. Believe me, I witnessed the “Great Bleach Fiasco of 89” when I was a junior, and it has haunted me ever since. (One of the staff wanted her hair bleached all over, and asked me to put it on. Just to be clear, she mixed it, I just applied it. When I rinsed it out, I noticed that the drain was clogging up…..from all the hair that was falling out. Of her head. At the front. In my dreams, I can still hear the screaming.)
So you can imagine my horror at finding a whole head, on scalp bleach booked in my column for last Wednesday. (As opposed to bleach highlights, which can go wrong, but at least it’s not a whole head of hair. If highlights go wrong you just loose tufts of hair, which isn’t pleasant, but at least hidable.) I’ve never done a full head of bleach, and was shitting large, triangular bricks at the prospect for at least 4 days. The lady at the L’Oreal technical hotline was full of good advice, and the other colour technician at work was able to tell me what I needed to know, and I was as ready as I’d ever be by Wednesday afternoon.
A very nice young woman came in, and unknowingly put me at ease by saying that her hairdresser told her what to tell me, and after I took a deep breath and gave God a stern talking to, I was able to replicate the job without incident. And as she went out the door with her newly blond hair, I offered up a prayer of thanks that neither of us ended the day in tears, and both of us with all our hair intact.
But tomorrow is another day!!
No comments:
Post a Comment