Orange is definitely not my color
I'm a big fan of bright, citrusy colors: yellow, coral, pink, teal. That list used to include orange but after Saturday, I'm thinking it's definitely not my color anymore.
It's no surprise that we're not dealing with the best economy presently and my every-two-months luxury of getting my hair done at a great salon has now been drastically downgraded. We're talking months in between visits. Realizing that I could neither go to my regular salon (insert serious frown here) nor was I willing to duck into a Great Clips (many bad experiences), I decided I'd give an old salon a second shot. Many ladies have heard of Aveda and their earth friendly products and swanky salons. What you may not know is that the training center for all these stylists and aesthiticians is right here in downtown Denver: the Aveda Institute. It is in all essences, a school. All of your services (haircut, massages, pedicures, highlights, etc) are performed by students and are extremely cheap. So while you're getting a drastic reduction in the cost, the appointment times are way longer and you're also taking your chances with someone who botches what they're doing to you. Case-in-point: me on Saturday.
I went in Saturday with the intentions (or hope) that I could turn my butterscotch highlights into a more golden-to-medium brown color. Seemed easy enough to me anyway. Going darker seemed to have less margin for error in my head. I had been there earlier last month and the girl who did my hair did an awesome job, even if one section of highlights was thicker than I wanted. No biggie, it was the color I'd asked for. Upon making the appointment for Saturday, I was told that I'd be given a student that was "really good at color" since the last girl was out of town. I felt comfortable in this, especially since my last visit had been so positive. I went in Saturday, armed with a couple of pictures of the exact shade I wanted. My stylist spent about 5 minutes with me, discussing the perfect color I wanted and off she went. I wasn't concerned...she was "really good at color"!
A couple hours later, she had rinsed out the product, put the toner on to bring it to the color I wanted and she set to work styling my hair. Now, while I may not be a pro at blowing my hair dry, I know enough to know what does and doesn't work when blowing my curly hair out. Specifically, you have to use a round brush and cannot, I repeat, cannot just finger dry it. Otherwise, you got poofy frizz. Even though I told my stylist this beforehand, what did she do? Dried with just her fingers and then tried to "fix it" with the flat iron. Result: sorta straight frizz. I guess we were not speaking the same language. Despite not having the great blowout I was hoping to leave with, I liked the color of the highlights. At least what I could see, as these were on top of my head. I didn't feel the need to check every layer since what I could see looked good. Giving her a generous tip (because hey, it's the holidays), I headed home and it was then that I realized not all was well in highlights land.
I'll preface this by saying that it's kinda dark in the Institute and we all know how early it gets dark around here. So what I was looking at inside the salon and my reflection in my car's mirror was less than accurate, shall we say. Walking into the bathroom at home equipped with lights so bright they could double as a landing strip if you added one more, I realized that all was not well in highlights land. The highlights on my bangs were about an inch wide (not the fine look I asked for) and they were suspiciously tangerine-esque and there was substantial rootage showing. Getting the highlights really close to the hairline is not too much to ask for and it can be acheived. While I was unhappy with the bang portion of my 'do, I decided to sleep on it and woke Sunday morning deciding that I would just buy a box of dark brown hair dye and minimize the fruity shade of my bangs. It ddidn't seem that tragic...it was such a small portion. Or so I thought.
Come Sunday morning, with handmade highlighting foils and hair dye ready to go, I discovered the true extent of my trip to the salon. As I started pulling the strips out to color, I brushed my hair back to keep it out of the dye. And then I saw it. The screeching orange that is normally seen on produce and these creepy little beings.
Now had the orange been in super fine sections like I'd requested, it wouldn't have given me the reaction of "holy crap". No, underneath the stylist had apparently either A)gone completely insane, B)was extremely lazy or C)thought that it would be funny to send me home with inch and half wide chunks of Day-Glo orange, paired with about an inch of dark brown roots. Super attractive. I started combing through my hair and found more and more of her handiwork. None of the "highlights" (that's being quite generous...they're more like white trash calling cards) were the same width and they were all varying shades of orange and an, if this is even possible, almost translucent and glowing yellow. Much like this. I kid you not.
Again with the knock-you-over attractiveness. I definitely should've taken pictures. Some of the highlights were salvageable in that I picked a few small pieces out to save (they looked more copper when in small quantities...I could do copper) and slopped the brown dye on the rest of it. You too can have great looking highlights!!!...if you go home and cover up what the student did to you.
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