Another Hair Reinvention
For the last Hair Reinvention I thought about what I wanted to do for a long time: I stared at pictures of girls with silver locks, I spent an obscene amount of time agonizing over different shades of grey, and I went to the salon for multiple consultations.
This time was a lot different. I was over it. My roots had hit the almost 4 inch mark in the back and the idea of another 6 week touch up made me want to vomit. The time and commitment to my bleach blonde proved too annoying to justify the hot piece of ass I felt like with bleach blonde hair. I needed a break.
So without a single idea of what color I wanted, I called the salon and made an appointment. I didn’t have a picture, I had not spent any time thinking about this (what’s new? hello bangs!) and all I knew was this – I needed something close to my natural hair color that won’t need to be touched up in 6 weeks.
Truth be told, most people swear there is no coming back from bleached blonde. They may be right, but I was not ready to raise the white flag just yet by cutting off my hair. I’ve waved this flag before and I may get there again, but for now I wanted to try and get back to something “easier” to maintain without the big chop. So, as we were being honest, I will most likely have to go back in 6 weeks and have something done. But for now, I’m hoping this color (that I love!) fades to something that some simple highlights will rescue.
I sat down in the chair and explained I was over it. Courtney, a hair colorist at Parlor in the East Village, got it. She is no stranger to the double process and told me if she didn’t work in a salon she wouldn’t keep up with it either. Phew… we were on the same page quickly. I was basically at the hand of her decisions. Which I guess, if you really think about it, this is the case every time you sit in a hair stylist chair. But, a picture of what I want, or thinking about it for a long time prior usually gives me the comfort that I have some say in what is going on up top. Not this time.
All I said was please get my hair to a place where it is close enough to my natural hair that I don’t have to come back every 6 weeks for touch-ups and the magic started. Courtney explained we were going to go a little darker overall and a little darker on the bottom because it will fade. She didn’t want to do another double process because of my resistance to anything with a warm yellow undertone. I wanted something with cooler undertones. A single process it was. Just the word “single” vs. the double process I had every other time sounded like a move in the right direction. I was game.
An hour and a half later, after Courtney patiently painted very small strips of hair with color, I sat and waited for about 20 minutes, read Bad Feminist on my phone, got rinsed, and eventually my hair was blown out to this.
I am very happy.
Thoughts? How do you guys manage the 6 week touch ups?
***beauty always comes from within, photo by BtM, xoxo behind the mirror***
