Bad Haircut

It's been a while since I've blogged. As most of you know, that's mainly because at the end of this month I am starting the first wave of what will likely be a few waves of the great move back up North. And yes, I am referring to it as "back up North" but for all a y'all who have been following me since day one: NUEVA FREAKIN YORK!

I am excited, to say the least.

But on to a more serious note: my hair. I have been a years-long follower of the Devachan Salon and Deva hair products. Since we moved to South Coka, I have saved my hair cuts for visits back to NYC. While this has seemed frivolous to some, it's important to me for many reasons. As a young person, I loathed my hair. It really wasn't until I found Ouidad and then Devachan -- two salons in NYC that specialize in, meaning only cut, curly hair -- in my mid-twenties that I was truly able to celebrate the curl factor.

I don't need to tell you ladies about how important our hair is: we all know that if we don't feel good about our hair, all bets are off about anything else on the face. In fact, all bets are off about everything else on the body because generally we buy outfits that work with "how we look" and "how we look" has just about everything to do with our hair. I am now learning this life lesson the hard way.

Because of my deep devotion to the Deva world, I was mildly curious at first when visiting Boston and later Florida to learn that Deva had begun training independent salons on the Deva cut. This might sound crazy cult-like, but the cut is a process of first cutting the hair when it's dry, then rinsing the hair with all the Deva products, setting/drying it, then trimming out all errant pieces. It takes at least 3 hours no matter which stylist you tend to visit.

Curiosity morphed into full-blown (pun intended) interest when I learned there was a place in Asheville, NC -- a mere 2.25 hours away from Columbia -- that had been trained by the Deva peeps. Oh joy! I could now travel one state over to get my maintenance cut. It's important to note at this point that with my hair, I really only need to get a cut once every 6 months.

Now some people think it's crazy that I drove 2.5 hours each way just for a haircut. Others think it's nuts that I decided to do this on the day of a good friend's wedding, which was back in Columbia that evening. But most understand that when you're at that point where you can't stand your hair because it needs to be cut, you'll hire a private jet to shoot you out to another country and time zone just to get it done. It turns out that's what I should have done (hire a jet to NYC...or waited three more weeks for when I moved there. Argh!).

Almost as soon as the woman started cutting I knew I was in trouble. Whereas the Devachan people cut every curl on an angle (at the curve of the "S" shape it makes), this woman was cutting each curl with the scissors parallel to the floor. The thing was, I had shown her a photo of myself from December 2009 [for reference, see this Shop Tart post] and explained that I liked it short in front and long in the back. She said, and I quote, "OK, so more of a shaping than a cut." With this in mind, I didn't pipe up about the style of cutting.

But then she did the unthinkable; something that would never have been done at Devachan: she took a whole hunk of hair right by my face, not each separate curl, and chopped it straight across. That was when I freaked out and made a comment to her and I think it was pretty much all downhill from there. When we were done washing, productizing and setting the hair, it was uneven. She began trimming the longer side (fine) but then started snipping the shorter side (wtf?!). I told her she needed to stop cutting, then quickly ran through the process of buying some Deva products, paying and leaving in a flash because, remember, I needed to get back to Columbia in time for CC's wedding.

By the time I was about 25 minutes outside of Asheville, my hair had fully dried and was the length of my face! I had told her to take one inch off, but at least three, if not four, were gone. I had told her I preferred it short in the front and long in the back (like the old photo), but as you can see from this photo of irate me, it's long in the front and short in the back.

So I called the salon and complained, and they called me back two hours later saying that they would be reimbursing me for the cut and invited me back in for a "fix." I suppose that if my hair were about 2 inches longer than it is now I might give them the opportunity to fix this do, but with such short hair now I can't possibly let anyone fix anything unless they are located at Devachan NYC HEADQUARTERS!

Please let this mournful tale be a lesson to you, lovelies. If you have a person who or a place that cuts your hair the way you like it, don't stray. I did and I've paid the price - my hair is now a triangle. For those of you with super curls, you know what I'm talking about.