Me crying at work because I’m cold.

I got an email yesterday from some girls who are in beauty school. They have been dealing with some rude clients and wondered if a rude client has ever made me cry?

Yes, yes they have.

When I was an assistant, there was this really mean old lady who had done every plastic surgery known to man at least 15 times. I don’t know if this was the reason for her hating the world, but I just don’t know. I’m open to it. Anyway, I was about to blow dry her hair when she stopped me to ask how old I was. I answered “21″, she said “give me someone else. you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re too young. i just don’t want to deal with this today.”. I said that I’d go find her someone older (haha) and while I walked around the salon looking for someone older than 21 to blow dry her hair, she sat there muttering loudly about “someone so young shouldn’t be working here. they don’t know what they’re doing. my day is just too busy to have a bad blow dry”.

I went to the back area and started crying. I felt so bad. This lady was a repeat offender, though, and had made at least 2 or 3 other assistants cry before.

Nothing else comes to mind as far as crying, but there was another time maybe 3 years ago where a woman was equally rude. She was the kind of woman who thought she was super fabulous (but wasn’t), so she acted like a diva wherever she went. I think she probably left the salon and called all of her friends to brag about how she just yelled at the girl blow drying her hair.

Anyway, In the first 5 seconds of the blow dry, she said “Stop! Aren’t you going to do it this way?”. I said “yes, but I’m first getting these frizzy hairs in the front so they don’t dry on their own”. She started flipping out and saying I didn’t know what I was doing and ran out of the salon with wet hair. Then in the doorway, she turned around and yelled “If you want to learn how to do a REAL blow dry, try going to the Upper East Side!!”.  And that was the last time I saw her and her ugly knock-off Coach handbag.

The funny thing, is that I did learn how to do a blow dry at a salon on the Upper East Side. That is where you go for an old lady blow dry. I can do that if you want to look like a news reporter, but I would much more prefer to make you look like a Victoria’s Secret model, if you will only let me.

In both of these cases, I didn’t do anything wrong. It was just nasty people taking out their nasty attitudes on me.

So, chin up! Just make fun of the rudies when they leave. There are other ways to get your point across besides stomping around and being rude, so in my opinion, they deserve it.

Hairlings, I have really enjoyed all of your “chatting” comments. I really learned something! Honestly, it is quite awkward to ask at the beginning of an apointment “are you a chatter or do you want me to shut my trap?”, so I never know for certain if the client is a chatter or not, unless it is the most obvious body language ever. Or I guess mouth language. Either one.

So, I wanted to tell you that if I happen to be shampooing my own client, and they don’t initiate the convo, I’m going to zip it and let them enjoy their head massage. Because you guys are so great and told me you like silence during the shampoo!

Also, I had to laugh when one commenter talked about how it is so straining to try and have a conversation during the blow dry. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to embarrassingly nod my head cluelessly at what the person in my chair is saying, because I can’t hear a word with the 20 blow dryers going at the same time in the background. I always feel rude saying “what?”, “pardon?”, “I’m sorry?”, “say it again, please?”. So I try my best to read lips and strain like a 90 year old to hear the gossip. (it’s almost always gossip that is hard to hear because they are talking more quietly than normal when dishing goss’.)

This is how happy I look when I can hear my clients. (also this is how happy I look when I’m dancing.)

Have a great great great fabulous weekend, guys! I’m working some hair magic for a short film this weekend. The film is about an underground music scene in the late 1950s-early 1960s. Cannot WAIT to do that hair.

Hey, It’s Jake. I came across these images today from the Russian Alternative Hair Show, that took place at the Kremlin on Sept. 28th. I couldn’t help but pass them on. Even though the looks are outlandish and probably impossible to style, they are still pretty interesting aesthetically. All images: REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov

Me on the far right, in 2001. Addicted to the flat iron. (and bleach and lipgloss and cheerleading)

Q by Allie: Hey there Reagan! My name is Allie and i absolutely love your blogs. I am a teenager with a similar hair texture to yours except slightly curlier/frizzier. I feel like all teenage girls nowadays flat iron their hair daily which is obviously super damaging. do u have any cute hair ideas that dont involve too much heat!? hopefully u see this cause i really need some help here! thanks.

A by Reagan: Allie, I was a flat ironer too! The flat iron became really big when I was in high school, and I guess it’s never left the high school scene! In my experience, the flat iron is what destroyed my hair. Before the flat iron, my hair was so thick and perfectly healthy. Before I knew it, the flat iron had wrecked my hair so much that the only way for it to look smooth was to keep flat ironing it every day. It wasn’t until I finally cut off lots of length and left it alone that it got back to health. Pheeww! Bad memory!

Anyway, Allie, I love you. Do you know how much I hate unecessary damage on hair? Because of over-heat styling, overdue haircutting, over-processing color treatments or whatever it may be. Just treat your hair nice and it will be so much more glorious resulting in tons of boyfriends or girlfriends or jealous people! I am constantly trying to show my clients how to keep their hair healthy, so thank you for this question.

So to answer your question finally, I say look all over this blog! I am really into just enhancing your hair’s natural texture. Maybe by blow drying only the roots and letting your ends dry how they naturally would, or just curling a few pieces around your face to feel jazzy. You could also let your hair air dry before putting it in a bun, a pretty ponytail or a braid of some kind. And don’t be afraid to use product. Product is always a great way to cut down on styling time AND damage. As always, I love Redken Outshine for almost every hair texture and styling purpose. But I still think it’s freaking sick and disgusting that they call it polishing milk. Milk?? Are you kidding me?

I have an idea! What do you say you and I run around dressed like hamburglars and steal all of your friends flat irons so they are forced to stop doing it? No? That’s illegal?

Have you seen the documentary “Good Hair”? I finally watched it a few nights ago after wanting to see it ever since it came out. Chris Rock interviews several African American men and woman about their pursuit of “good hair”. They talk about relaxers, wigs, weaves, braiding, setting and a little cutting. It was so interesting to see how young this starts, what an art it is, and how important it is culturally!

A lot of the movie talked about the relaxing processs. The little girl in the picture started getting relaxers when she was just 4 years old. They call it “Creamy Crack”, because basically once you start relaxing, you can never stop. It’s true though. Pin straight ends with tiny, curly roots does look kind of crazy, it would be almost impossible to wait years for the curly to all come back in.

I have a good friend with an afro that goes wider than her shoulders, and she doesn’t relax it chemically, but she likes it better straight. If my hair could be that big just on it’s own, I would be in huge hair heaven.

It was fun to see the weaving and relaxing side of hair that I’m so much less familiar with. I had a very different subway ride after seeing the movie. I just want to study eveyone’s hair!

It was a dream to work with my husband and friends on the Aussie video shoot yesterday. I hope to do this much more often, and to always be able to have so much say in how the day goes. I chose many of my friends as models, who were all beautiful and so fun to work with, and Jake was there to film all 5 videos and all the stills too.

Here are just a few photos from the day. I’m not pressing my luck by trying to upload any more because blogging has for some reason been pure hell for me this morning. (broken laptop, images not showing up, entire hdof website not showing up..)

I can’t wait for the videos to be all edited and ready to show you!

My friend, Jana, did a mini interview with me about my job a few months ago. One of the questions she asked me, was how to avoid sounding rude if you want to get your hair done in peace and quiet, instead of chatting with your stylist the whole time you’re in the chair.

I only wrote a few sentences when answering Jana’s question, but it was really such an important one. The personality and social part of my job is a big chunk of it. If I’m not memorable to my clients, they might call the salon when they need a clean up and say “give me anybody”.  But I also really enjoy talking to my clients. There are times when I look at the schedule and see a specific person that I love to talk to, and it makes my whole day.

So, I try asking a few questions at the beginning of the appointment, and depending on how they answer, I’ll know if they are chatters or not. I’ll say “What do you do for work?” and they might say “I work in finance” if they aren’t a talker. And if they ARE a talker, they might say “I work in finance. I work downtown at _____. I specialize in _____” and then go on from there. Usually I try out two or three questions and if they are still just ‘yessing’ or ‘no-ing’ then I think they probably want me to shut the H up. But if it’s been 5 minutes and I already know where they went to college, how many roommates they have and what their favorite Italian restaurant is, they are probably chatters.

If you’re not a chatter, my best advice is to bring a prop. The best props are a book/magazine or a laptop/phone. You can just pretend to be busy with those guys even if you’re not. I used to blow dry Joy Behar’s hair, and she would bring in several of these items. Newspapers, her blackberry and a little note book to write all of her ideas in. She has the hair of pretty much 6 adult people, so she really needed all that material. I think we only said 10 whole sentences to each other ever. She is friendly and sweet, but very busy. She was a pro at getting her downtime without any mixed signals.

I had two experiences recently with this. One girl at the end of her haircut said “I love it! Plus you’re a talker, so I’m for sure coming back to you.”, and the other pulled out her book while I was getting her a tea. I didn’t say a word to her until I needed more information about how she wears her bangs.

Most people aren’t so obvious with whether they want to talk or not, so I’m curious, what do you like? Do you come to the salon excited to catch up about your vacations, kids, work/love life? Or do you want to close your eyes and have your hair combed and snipped/blow dried in peace?

[Photo: Jacob Breinholt]

Thank you all for being so patient with this tutorial. So many people have asked about it, and I feel bad that it took so long!

I wanted to mention, that this style was 100% thought up by me. I’ve never seen this style before, nor anything like it. But the day after we filmed this video, another blogger (non hairstylist) posted a picture tutorial that is semi-similar to this one. I just wanted to clear that up since I had previously told you that I invented this for Jen on Tony night. Which is still true.

As always, send pictures!

What do you guys think about Nicki Minaj? I saw her at the Betsey Johnson show last week and I love her. I think it’s so fun, all the wig wearing in the music industry these days. Wigs are so expensive, but I hope fab wigs can trickle down to us common folk so that I can enjoy some temporary colorful hugeness. Thanks to Lady Gaga, Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj for being so gutsy with their style!

(Plus did you see Nicki Minaj on SNL last year with Jesse Eisenburg? They were hilarious in the Bride of Blackenstein sketch!)

PS the Tony Hair Tutorial was supposed to be posted today, but Jake decided he wanted to edit it again. Sorry! It’s coming soon!

[Photography: J. Breinholt]

It’s still fashion week for another day here in NYC, and yesterday was J.Crew’s presentation. Jake went as press, and got these photos for me. They had lots of hats in the collection, and those who weren’t wearing hats were wearing painfully tight pony tails and tangerine lip color. Did you know a perfect, slicked pony tail is one of the hardest things to master in the hair world? In fact, personally, they are my weakness. You get it all perfectly smoothed out,  and one false move forces you to start over. I took a 3 hour class on ponies once. They used about half a bottle of mega-hold gel and had the model lay down during the styling and everything. I thought it was a little much, but afterwords she looked like she had had a face-lift.

Pony rant over.

This hat below is my favorite! I have a panama hat, but it is pretty cheap. I think I’ll invest in a nicer one next spring.

Resuming pony rant…There is something amazing about a girl who can pull of a slicked pony. I love to have hair all messy around my face, so to me, slicked hair is out of my comfort zone. But look at this girl below. She is such a babe with her tight hair and her crazy cheek bones.

Do you wear a sleek pony?

All photos by Jake Breinholt