Concepción Salon

New town, no clients, ten years of experience. It took me a while to work out that the last part was the problem.

I went around to salons and kept getting turned down. I had assumed the experience was the selling point. It was not. It was the liability.

A brand new stylist is cheap and she will do it your way. Somebody ten years in has her own methods, her own standards, her own opinions about how things should be done.

If she shows up with an empty
book, she is all of that cost with none of the clients.

That is a reasonable business decision.
I would probably think about it too from the other side of the desk.

But I want to tell you what it feels like. You are good at something. You are actually good at it. And the being-good is the reason nobody wants you.

What got me through was not optimism.
I knew me. I knew I would succeed. It was just a fact I had about myself that nobody else had access to yet.

They can see it now.
DM me the word CONSULT.

Nineteen years behind the chair and I have never danced on the internet.
Not one time.
I am not judging anybody who does.
If that is your thing, have fun with it.

But when I am choosing who touches my head, a dance is not information. I want to know what she thinks.

I want to know what she refuses to do and why. I want to know whether she will tell me the truth when the thing I asked for is not going to work on my hair.

None of that fits in a dance.

So I decided a long time ago that if I am going to take up space on somebody’s phone, I am going to spend it saying something I actually believe.

What is the one thing you wish your stylist would just tell you straight?
DM me the word CONSULT.

Round brush, blow-dry brush, air dry.
Three ways to end up with three completely different heads of hair.

Air drying gets dismissed and it should not be. It is the kindest thing you can do to your hair, and if your texture cooperates it’s the easiest. It doesn’t give you polish, it gives your hair freedom.

The blow-dry brush is the one I would hand most women. One hand, no coordination required, eighty percent of a blowout in a fraction of the time. There is no shame in the easier tool. It works.

The round brush gives you the most. More lift at the root, more control at the ends, more of the shape that holds through an evening.

It is also the hardest. Two hands, arms up, behind your own head, and it takes practice most people never get.

So it is not which one is best. It is which one you will actually use on the morning you are already running late.

Which is in your drawer, and which do you actually reach for?
DM me the word CONSULT.

You have been going to the same person for six years and you like her.
That is not the same thing as being taken care of.
I want to be careful here, because I believe in loyalty.
My whole business is built on women who have sat in my chair for years.

Consistency and trust is the thing I value most.

But consistency is not sameness.

Your hair is not what it was six years ago. There is more gray and it came in in a different pattern than it started.

The texture shifted. Your mornings changed. The kids moved out, or the job changed,
or you took something up.

If none of that has ever come up, that is not consistency. That is autopilot.

The question is not whether she still does the same cut. It is whether anybody has asked you lately if it is still right.

You are allowed to like somebody and still want more from the chair.

How long have you been in the same shape? No judgment. I just want to know.
DM me the word CONSULT.

You are going to cover your gray every four to five weeks for the rest of your life, and nobody has ever done that math out loud with you.

So let us do it. Every four and a half weeks is somewhere around eleven or twelve times a year.

Now think about what one of those costs you in hours. Not dollars. Hours.

Getting there, sitting,
processing, drying, styling, getting home.
Multiply it.

That is not an appointment. That is a standing commitment for the next twenty years, and you signed
it without anybody showing you the terms.

Which is why I am particular about it.

When something repeats twelve times a year forever, ninety minutes stops being a convenience and becomes a real piece of your life.

I cannot make your gray come in slower.
I wish I could.

What I can do is make sure the part you control does not take one minute longer than it has to.

What number did you land on? Post it below.
DM me the word CONSULT.

I hear a version of this almost every week.
I do not want anything crazy. But I also do not want to look like my mother.

She is bracing for one of two disappointments.

Either somebody excited to experiment on her, or somebody who stopped learning twenty years ago and is going to hand her the same shape she has had since her wedding.

Those are not the only two options.
They have just been the only two she has found.
There is a third. Somebody who has been doing this long enough to be steady, and who kept learning anyway.

Modern methods, careful hands, wearable hair.

You do not have to choose between new and good.

Which of the two have you been stuck with? I have a feeling most of you know exactly which one.
DM me the word CONSULT.

Three ways to show up to a color appointment.
Only one of them is right.

A week of buildup. Somebody told you dirty was better and you took it seriously. There is an old idea that oil protects the scalp, so it came from somewhere.

But buildup means the color has to fight
through grime before it can do anything else, and it does not fight through evenly. That is how you end up hollow in spots.

Washed this morning, still slightly damp.
I understand this one completely and I have never been annoyed by it.
But freshly washed hair does not hold a foil. It slips. And damp in places means wet
sections and dry sections on the same head, which do not take color the same way.

So. Clean, but not freshly washed. Washed, but not today. Nothing heavy on it, nothing slick, nothing wet.
That is the whole rule and it costs you nothing but knowing.

Save this before your next appointment.

DM me the word CONSULT.

You loved it in the salon. By Wednesday you could not stand it. Everybody assumes that is about the cut.
Usually it is not.
It is that the cut was built for a stylist’s hands and you do not have a stylist’s hands. Or thirty minutes.
Or the right brush, or the arm strength to hold it up that long behind your own head.

You watched somebody make it look effortless for forty-five minutes, then went home and tried to do it
in eight, one-handed, while you were already late.
Of course it fell apart.

The red flag is not that it happened once. It is that it happened, you went back, and nobody adjusted anything.

What should have happened is she asks what your mornings actually look like and cuts you
something that works on your worst day instead of your best one.

If you have said it twice and got a product recommendation both times, that is the flag.
You should not need professional hands to wear your own hair.
DM me the word CONSULT.

I am going to ask you what time you leave the house.
That is a hair question.
I will ask other things, too. Do you play tennis? Do you put it up? How many mornings a week do you
honestly have ten minutes for your hair?

Not what you wish. What is true.

People think that is small talk. It is not. I am designing something.

Because a style that needs twenty minutes and a round brush is a beautiful style but a wrong cut, if you have eight minutes and a ponytail holder.
And a color that has to be babied is not a good color for a woman who swims, or who is outside, or who washes it more than she would like to admit.

The hair has to work on your worst morning. Not your best one.
So tell me. How many minutes do you actually have?
DM me the word CONSULT.

“Purple shampoo will not save you if your highlights are not light enough.
Purple shampoo will not make them lighter, and everyone who has been leaving it on for 30 minutes just got defensive.

Here is why.

Purple shampoo is a toner. It deposits violet pigment to help neutralize yellow tones, and that can make your hair look cooler, cleaner and brighter.

But it does not lift the hair additional levels.
If your highlights are too dark, purple shampoo cannot make them lighter, leaving it on longer will not turn it into bleach, overusing it could leave your hair looking too cool, gray, lavender or dull especially if your hair is porous.

If that’s your jam then I’m happy for you.
However, if your highlights need to be lighter that requires a professional lightening service.

If you have been wondering why your stylist is telling you to go home and just use purple shampoo and your hair will be lighter, DM me the word, CONSULT.