teinture

For the last four years or so, I've had the habit of coloring my hair a little darker during the fall and winter months and lightening it during the summer. I don't know exactly why I feel the desire to do this; I think it has something to do with wanting it to be in synch with my surroundings. I feel odd having highlights when it starts to get gray and barren outside, and I feel odd having black hair when it starts to get sunny and lovely. Last week when the weather was so miserable I started thinking it was about time to darken it again, except I've sort of tired of this whole routine and don't want to dye it again any time soon after this, so instead of just dying it black I wanted to just have it all be my natural color, so as it grows out I can just leave it alone.

The trouble with this decision is it requires me paying someone else to do it instead of doing it myself, something I try to avoid when it comes to haircare. I concede that it's worth it to get a professional to color your hair sometimes, except when I've dyed it black I felt like it wasn't too complicated. And after three years of successful self-haircuts, I got it professionally cut for my birthday last year, a move that ended in tears and me sending a text message to a few people (because that's how you deal with this kind of tragic event) lamenting that "I just got the worst haircut of my entire life."* To which my brother helpfully responded, "haha u should have cut it urself." Gee, thanks.

Anyway. Now it's now, and here I am needing a professional colorist to do the job so he or she can match my natural color. Complicating this is the fact that I am in an unfamiliar city, which also has to be incredibly expensive, and I am philosophically opposed to paying a lot of money for this in addition to being, you know, a poor college student making her way in the cold cruel world. Good thing the internet has never let me down! I learned that the Jean Louis David salon would give me a haircut or a dye job for 5 euros, with the caveat that it would be a trainee doing the work under the watchful eye of his superiors. Color me cheap. I went to the salon and made an appointment, and was suitably impressed by how silly-expensive it looked that I was pretty sure my hair wouldn't end up blue. The lobby was all white-- white floors, white walls, white counter-- and at the counter were two tall women dressed entirely in black. One was busy talking into a headset, but the other politely told me that I would have to meet the colorist before I could make an appointment, and directed me up a staircase behind her, which was nearly invisible, being also entirely white, and was adorned with mirrors of a quantity and size that rather perturbed me. A very attractive gentleman and his very attractive companion appeared, and the woman pointed them in my direction. I told him that I wanted my hair dyed, NOT cut, and that I just wanted my natural color. He nodded vaguely as I spoke. "Tournez." I dutifully did a small turn. He looked over my hair, touched it, lifted it. I tried not to laugh. "C'est bon," he said approvingly, then nodded at the woman and walked away. So, I was allowed to make an appointment.

Fast forward a few days, and I got a very good (and very cheap) shampoo and dye job, to which I added some scissor-work of my own, and I'm happy with the results. So, the adage that you get what you pay for is not always (although, often) true.

Here's an inside look at Jean Louis David, starting with this intimidating staircase:



Flurry of activity!



The redhead is my colorist, having a pow-wow with her instructor:



*This is really saying something because when I was 7 my mom totally botched cutting my bangs, and they stood straight up for a couple of weeks.  ¶