| by Lou | 12.04pm UK time |

In the aftermath of the hair crisis, KGB who I bought the voucher from have told me they will refund the money I paid. A strongly worded email to the hairdressing salon garnered an apology and an offer for free colour treatments (which I will not be taking up).

The colour is okay, but I don't particularly like it. It looks like a glowing beacon in daylight (though as London is plunged into typical overcast darkness that might not be a problem), and then looks okay in the evening time.

Excuse the terrible photo, but this best shows the luminous roots and also my all-important accessories (sparkly clutch from Bel, Diana F+ camera, glass of bubbly):




I reckon I'll leave it a couple of weeks to recover a little bit, then put a darker red through to try and tone it down a bit (though the roots coming through might do that anyway).


To liven up my extremely boring life of make-up I bought a blue colour palette and have gone back to liquid eye-liner (and found it's so much easier to use than on previous attempts).

I did feel a little bit more lively in the photos than my usual pale canvas, though that might have been the rosiness of high wine intake and a very successful matchmaking attempt by the bride:

| by Lou | 5.10pm UK time |

This is a story all about how AM Beauty Salon in Knightsbridge ruined my lovely hair. If you've stumbled upon this post via googling them, take my advice: DO NOT GO THERE. I have aged 10 years in the last 24 hours dealing with the catastrophic result of their absolute incompetence.


Let me set the scene. This is me on Sunday - dyed red hair, with a bit of regrowth. (And new £5 sunglasses, which I love - aren't they hilarious? I found them in an emo teen shop in Edinburgh.)



I had wanted to get my hair refreshed for The Wedding Of The Year on Saturday, so jumped at this voucher offer from kgb deals:

£29 for a half head of highlights or a full head of colour plus a wash, cut and blow dry worth £235 at A.M Beauty Salon - save 88%

I went in and said "I'd like to dye it ginger". The hair-dresser expressed some reservations. I said I would be fine to keep it red if it wasn't going to work. He brought out colour samples and pointed at the vibrant ginger. I said that was what I was thinking, but that I would be okay with the darker ginger if it wasn't going to work in my hair. He said he was going to give it a go.

Here is where is starts to get a bit fishy. He made up the dye and applied it to my roots. Just my roots. And left it for at least 45 minutes. It might have been an hour. Then put it through the rest of my hair and left it for at least another 45 minutes. It might have been another hour. By the time it was washed out I had read 100 pages of my book and my scalp was starting to go numb.

They rinsed it out and sat me down in front of the mirror. My roots were a luminous peroxide-orange colour. The rest was a dark ginger. I was stunned. Mortified.

He seemed to say something about the lightness being brought down through my hair "next time". I didn't really know what this meant as surely if it was a two-stage process you would tell the client that at the beginning. I said he needed to make the roots darker. He said wouldn't I want to make the rest lighter to get the colour I wanted? I said I didn't care, whichever was easiest, I just needed to have one single coloured hair as I have a wedding on Saturday.

He took me back to the sink and spent approx 20-30 mins rubbing the hair dye in to the next section of hair. During this time I had rising panic that nearly led to tears. I can't go to the wedding looking like a clown! But I reassured myself that of course he would sort it out. He's an expert! He knows what he's doing!

He rinsed it out and took me back to the chair. And commenced with the cut (a bit of a trim really - I think it took all of 15 minutes). And then blow dried it.

The roots were still a luminous orange. The next section was just a little bit lighter to slightly mask the difference. He insisted that the salon lights were emphasising it, and that it really wouldn't be noticeable in all other lighting. And that next time the light colour would be pulled through the rest of the hair.

I was so convinced (or so wanting to convinced) that, having been there for 4 hours by this stage, I tipped him. £10.

This morning I woke up to this:



Not so bad, you're thinking.

But allow me to emphasise the difference in colours:


Disgusting.

How did this happen?

How does an "expert" do this?

How does a salon let a client leave looking like this?

And how could this possibly be worth £235?!

Suddenly everything he did became clearly inept in retrospect:

• Putting the colour into the roots so much longer before the rest of the hair. What the fuck! I'm no hair expert (hence trusting him), but even I know that untreated hair (ie the roots) reacts more strongly to colour than treated hair. When I or a hair-dresser has ever dyed my hair in the past the roots are done, and very swiftly followed by the rest. No 45+ minute gap. WHAT THE FUCK.
• Telling me that in the "next stage" the lighter ginger would be brought through the rest of my hair. What the fuck! I asked for ginger hair, not an inch of ginger hair. Who in their right mind thinks that someone asking for ginger hair is saying "I want an inch of ginger hair"? And why on earth act as though it needs more time for the colour to work in the rest of my hair when he himself was the one who put it on the roots for so much longer? WHAT THE FUCK.

He had become progressively quieter during the time I was there. I realise now that he was probably panicking. He had been scratching at my hair when the dye was in to see how it was working. He really scrubbed that dye through the second time round after I'd expressed discontent. He knew that it was awful.

In blind panic I got two boxes of my trusty usual hair dye, thinking that even if it dyed my roots a bright red they would at least be the same colour as the rest of my hair. I enlisted a friend to put it through and she says that the "expert" hadn't even evenly fucked my hair - some roots were lighter than others, some bits at the back had been missed.

Thank god for Schwarzkopf Live Colour XXL Red Passion. I shall go to the ball.


Shame that even after five (5!) conditioning treatments my hair still feels like straw, and my scalp is very irritated.

I have sent a Very Strongly Worded email to the salon with a photo, have requested my money back from kgb, and am never trusting a British hairdresser ever again.

| Posted by Lou | The time is 6.15pm here in London UK |


Rather a long time ago Pretty Pretty Pretty posited a hairific use for surplus coconut milk, which I tried and was not overly whelmed by. It is rather messy and I found didn't really do much, but at the same time it costs fuck-all and does at least as much as a commercial hair treatment. (Sorry for forgetting to comment saying that, PPP. Better late than never?)

However, reading the post and exploring it further did lead me to discovering that coconut oil is supposedly the holy grail of hair treatments. (And a make-up remover! Will let you know after I've tried that.)

So when I stumbled upon a massive tub of coconut oil for £1 the other day, I decided to give it a go.

Note for any UK people reading this: coconut milk and coconut oil are waaaaaaay cheaper in the "ethnic" food aisles at That Evil Giant Supermarket Chain than they are in the regular aisles. Branded coconut milk with the noodles and cooking sauces = £1.39. Coconut milk in '70s tin with the Caribbean food = 79p*. Every little bit helps! ;-P

For me it was much more convenient to leave it in overnight than to be stuck at home for a couple of hours during the day. Therefore my pillow was covered in an old towel (actually I covered it in two old pillowcases and a towel, but there was no need to worry as it barely transferred onto the towel), I rubbed it through, and slept on it.

I did a double-shampoo, but that was probably unnecessary. (Actually a lot of people use coconut oil as a leave-in treatment, and I did notice that it provided instant shine that would be passable if sparingly used.) I also elected to condition, though apparently this is also unnecessary.

And as I said, my hair is now delightfully glossy and shiny and smells like coconut.

It was much more effective than recent commercial treatments I have tried, a heck of a lot cheaper, and bonus: no chemicals!



*My sister works in supermarket management and has this pet peeve that people buy brands and then complain how much they cost when there is an identical non-branded product for half the price that they have chosen not to purchase. I just thought I'd put that out there in the interests of our pet peeve adoration. (As a food snob, I do not have this pet peeve.)

| Posted by Lou | The time is9.30pm here in Invercargill NZ |

A reader emails -

Question: (feel free to blog the response)

Lou, how do you manage your hair? Mine is just getting to shoulder length and blowdrying it in the morning is already starting to grind my gears. I just saw a photo today on Twitter of a friend of mine (it was Steph! go check it out!) with UH MAY ZING looking newly cut short hair and am now feeling tempted to hack it all off again. What do you do with your hair? I wash mine every three days or so and that feels like a chore, having to brush it all out. Am I just lazy? Do you always wear it in the same style? Do you have fancy up-dos for going out? Please inspire me!
Yours, a regular reader and long time fan. (It's me, Bel.)


Thanks Reader.

(Might I say here: Steph's new hair does look UH MAY ZING.)

Well, I certainly have a lot of hair, and have engaged in a life-long struggle to get maximum results for minimum effort. Here is the full extent of my knowledge.


1. Washing

I wash my hair As Little As Possible (nowadays something like every 4 days, but I have gotten up to as much as every 6 days). I mean, who can be arsed? Plus my hair peaks on Day 3 and I don't want to lose that golden day to the drying effect that more frequent washing can have.

The key thing is to plan your hair styles around the hair washing cycle - namely, save your up-do for Day 4 when it's starting to get a bit minging and you need to hide it away, and if it works out fine, push it to - gasp - Day 5! This will give you better hair for the next cycle, guaranteed.

Here is an example of masking Old Hair that demonstrates the key principles - pulling it back off your face (taking emphasis away from hair quality, and keeping it from making your forehead feel gross), and maximising the fact that Old Hair generally sits quite nicely further down and thus the lengthy bits should be kept visible, such as by curling round your neck from a ponytail (if your hair is excessively long, like mine):

Maintaining a lengthy wash cycle does involve some planning ahead for me though - if the Big Thing is on Saturday, I make sure I am washing my hair Thursday or Friday, which means pushing or bringing forward the previous wash accordingly.


2. Brushing

I do not own a hair brush. I believe they are evil. If I brush my hair it ends up looking something like this:

This is not actually me, but it is scarily accurate

I believe many wavy- and curly-haired people feel the same.

I comb my hair after I have put conditioner in it. That is the only time anything is put through it. (This also makes sure conditioner is all through my hair, at which point I make myself wait several minutes, preferably with a shower cap on.)

This does mean that by Day 4 my hair is full of knots, so it does lessen the opportunity for romantic moments of having someone running their fingers through your hair. But oh, that's right, I'm single and no-one ever tries to so, um, yeah, not a problem for me.


3. Blow-drying

I was until recently Not A Friend of blow-drying. But my most recent haircut actually looked really good when blown dry, and as I was an unemployed bum for December and had a few Christmas parties I gave it a go and was really happy with the results.

I would not be able to do this on a workday morning though - it takes for-fucken-ever with my huge mop of long hair. But thankfully for me my hair looks better after it has been slept on (whether blown straight or straightened with straighteners), so it is something I could theoretically do at night. But it is still such a bugger for a lazy git like me I'm not sure I would do it all the time...

AND - and this is a bit BUT of an and - I found that it really dried my hair out. Like, disgustingly. I went and bought some heat protector spray to use in conjunction with it and it really hasn't helped. So I'm going to be saving the blow-drying for special occasions.

And it should be noted that my hair doesn't actually go straight - for example, this is a photo of me (drunk) on Day 3 of blown straight hair:



Versus a couple of days later on Day 2 of naturally dried hair:



The difference is purely that there's more frizz and a less controlled wave when not blown straight. Thus there isn't quite enough motivation to become a devotee of drying my hair to death and wasting so much time (that could otherwise be spent: sleeping, having a longer shower, watching tv... really important stuff like that).


4. Everyday Hair Management

So I've washed my hair very little, combed it not brushed it, let it naturally dry, and it's not Day 3 (aka The Golden Day). It's sort of biggish and a little bit frizzy and not really particularly Good Hair.

This is where we meet my new best friend - and you might be shocked that it has taken this long for me to meet my new best friend - the bobby-pin:



I fucken love these, and feel bad for not having previously appreciated them.

The best use is my Quick Fix (2 seconds and you're good) for all hair problems: I grab my front bits, tuck them round the back, and clip each side close enough togetherthat the ends of the bobby-pins cross. This keeps the clips in place for hours, pulls the annoying bits back to leave smoother beneath strands more visible, but isn't quite a half-up mini-pony-tail.

(For some reason I have a huge dislike of a half-up that uses a hair-tie - I'm happy to do it with clips (such as the ever-popular liquorice all-sorts clip Bel gave me), but just don't like hair being bunched on the back of your head in the way that a hair-tie does it.)

They're also useful for the serious business of Day 5, when you've really pushed your hair and don't know if you can get away with it and need a little extra oomph. This requires Bel's old fave back-combing (which for me is more back-fingering, with the bonus of sounding a bit saucy) to create a little bit of air to mask how disgustingly not-airy your hair is. I go for the back-finger twist clipped to the side with bobby-pin cross-over.


And that is literally the full extent of my Hair Thinking and Skillz.

For Really Special Occasions - like weddings - I will panic, try a couple of things, decide they're shit, and end up going for the Quick Fix.

| Posted by Lou | The time is 4.16pm here in London UK |

Good Hair. Something I have strived for my whole life. I started out well with a full head of long, curling, golden-blonde hair. Then it started to get out of control.

Then I got that haircut - the one when I was 12-years-old that looked like a mop (I know this because other kids in my school helpfully shouted "mop!" at me to let me know) and turned my tresses brown and straight.

Then as I grew it longer it became frizzier and more out of control (again, this one was eventually helpfully made known to me after I enquired of a school-"friend" who this "baff" person I hear so much about was, to be told it was me).

And suddenly it seemed like Good Hair was a distant dream that would never be reality to me, as I made the mental shift towards being somebody who has Bad Hair.

I was flicking through old photos last night to find examples of the different attempts at controlling my hair, and discovered that there is a distinct pattern in my attempts to "do my hair":

Yep, the good old "just shove it in a bun" approach to hair. A sure sign of someone who has no idea what the fuck to do with it. (And probably better than the "wear it down to show off the straggly dead ends" option...)

But before you all suggest different ways of doing hair, please let me interject with the fact that in reality I spend about 5 minutes on my appearance in the morning, of which 20 seconds is devoted to my hair. I then pull it out, put it back in, pull it out, put it back in about a thousand times throughout the day.

I had a moment the other day when I was in a meeting involving our Managing Director and had pulled my hair out of its bun and was flicking it around my fingers and playing with my hair-tie, and I realised the MD was looking at me strangely.

At which point I finally clicked that Real Adults don't sit there playing with their hair at work. They do their hair, and they leave it like that all day (whether it's in or out).

So now that I'm a nearly-30-year-old I probably need to crank up the Good Hair quest so that I can have hair so good that I neither need to spend time on it in the morning, nor fiddle around with it all day.

I guess Step 1 was dying it red, to give it a bit of inherent oomph.

Step 2 is to get it cut more often (when I got it cut last Friday it was 7 months since the last cut (yes, my ends were disgustingly dead)), and get it cut better.

Step 3 is to stop resting on the adequacy of my satisfactory hair product (a curl crème that is better than all of the previous products I have ever tried, but not great) and seek the holy grail (great curl crème).

Step 4 is to use all the various subtle methods of keeping it moisturised (Bel said to towel dry before using conditioner, I had added to this putting a shower cap on over the conditioner and leaving for at least 4 minutes).

And Step 5 is to stop fiddling with it.

In the meantime, I am challenging myself to go from now to my 30s without a single use of "shove it in a bun".

Posted by Bel. The time is 2.26pm here in Wellington NZ

A letter to your parents


To my mum and to my dad:
 
Thank you that your genetics combined nicely when it came to my hair. I've inherited Mum's fine texture, but a wave from Dad's curly mop. I avoided bottle-brush straight hair like Eddy or uncontrollable ringlets like Davy, instead coming out with the winning combination of thick, manageable and easy to colour hair, which has provided me with ample self-indulgent blog content.
 
Cheers!!
 

Demonstrating great hair even before curls kicked in during teen years

 
PS One thing though: pity about the mousy blonde colour, would have preferred to be naturally dark but can't complain too much.

Posted by Bel. The time is 11.43am here in Wellington NZ

Another picture of yourself

This is actually a very recent picture, taken on Friday to demonstrate my new FRINGE!! to Lou.

My hair is looking very kempt thanks to my hairdresser's best blow-drying efforts, but fear not, my natural bouf soon returned to wreak havoc.

Posted by Bel. The time is 9.15am here in Wellington NZ

Et voila, here is the photographic evidence, as requested!


Before:

Unfortunate lighting makes it look as if my hair was two-tone, or a botched home dye job or something, WHICH IT WAS NOT sheesh.

I usually dye my hair myself with ammonia-free organic based dyes, which you can get from health food stores. The amazing thing about these is that a) they don't stink to high hell and b) they don't burn the crap out of your scalp. This actually makes it a bit hard to tell if they are even dying your hair! But the product is lovely and they fade out very naturally, rather than a harsh regrowth line.


Way before:

(Hehehehehehee)

After:

JOKES!!

After: (Fo reals)

I call this "Messy Bun, After the Rain (August, 2010)".

This one evokes all the horror and versimilitude of a passport photo. Fun.

Close up shot. As if we were standing awkwardly on a bus together.

I got my hair did by Dom at Wildilocks on Cuba St. Highly recommended! Ignore the scary mannequins in the store window and check them out.

They have lots of organic products in stock and use ammonia-free dyes which are better for your head and for the environment. (A chemical is still used to activate the dye, but it is a fruit acid, rather than a chemical chemical.) I like the idea of going somewhere where their main focus is outside of the mainstream - my do was tame by their standards; the woman next to me was getting her hair bleached out in preparation for white dreads being put in - and she was a pagan witch/legal administrator.

Dom also did my hair all fancy for my birthday a few months back. I don't really have any good photos of that either - none that do it justice - but to give you an idea, here is the crappy PhotoBooth photo I took to show Lou after having texted her incessantly about it:

Aah PhotoBooth. Causing people to have dodgy eye levels since ages ago.

It was a bit bouffant and a bit curly-loopy and a bit Joan so all in all quite lovely. No matter that I took in this photo as my reference, I was still very pleased with the glamorous final result.

PS please also note my Frida Kahlo cushion covers that were a gift from Lou! Awwhh... Lou.

Posted by Bel. The time is 11:51am here in Wellington, NZ.

My hair's too short... But yours - pleeeease??!

Posted by Bel. The time is 8:05pm here in Wellington, NZ.

To be honest, this is not a technique of my own concoction, but rather one taught to me by my dear friend Heather. However it has served me well over the years, especially in recent times when a trip to the hairdressers is just too much to face.

I know most salons offer to trim your fringe for free between visits, but I mean, really, who does that?! Isn't it so much more rewarding to take up the snips in your own grasp and feel the power surge through your follicles!

As you can see, I was in severe need of a trim and so decided to employ The Technique. Simply, you hold the scissors vertically, so all cuts are made parallel to the hair shaft. This may seem counter-intuitive, but your locks do get scythed away - just in a far less dramatic fashion, as anyone who has unintentionally hacked their fringe to Bettie Page Land will relate.

Demonstrative video of me in action (only 1 minute long, chill your beans):

[stupid thing isn't loading properly - dunno why, it works fine on my flickr]

You will note at about 30 secs in I am running my fingers through my fringe - this is to shake out any hair that has been cut already - it is ESSENTIAL to do this often, otherwise you will cut more than you intend and the whole operation is futile.

Here is the end result:

Sexy face FAIL haha.

Another tip is to try and not get renegade hair in your bouquet of flowers either, that is kind of gross.