I wanted to get my hair done before returning to Canada for Christmas holidays. Naturally, I haven’t found a hairdresser to stick with in such a short time. I picked a nice looking salon in South Kensington, which unfortunately should probably remain nameless.
I had to rush to get to this appointment after work, as I had been told it was the latest time that night that they could start highlights. I arrived right on time, and waited about 15 minutes to be seated. The time I didn’t spend with my nose in trashy gossip magazines from September (trying to memorize the unknown-to-me faces of big British celebs), I noticed a girl complaining to two salon staff at the cash register. It ended with her saying that she had better get her credit back, and storming out.
As I was being outfitted with towels and gowns in my chair in the corner, I overheard the Australian girl next to me. She was fussing at the owner of the salon, telling him where she wanted her blonde to show. It didn’t take long for me to learn that this woman was having her full head of highlights completely redone because she felt they didn’t work the first time. Yikes! As I sat there waiting to have the same colour done.
When my funky hairdresser finally stopped running around the salon and settled in on me, she asked what I wanted. My usual confused jumble of “what I have now, but brighter. Just… blonde!” didn’t seem to mean anything to her. She grabbed a set of examples and asked me to point at my colour. How should I know?! Eventually, with the help of a coworker to translate, we had a plan, and she reassured me that while she was not very good at English, she was in fact a Senior Stylist.
The process took forever, and I think they may have forgotten about me for a while as I sat with a glaze on after the colour. This did allow me to watch more drama unfold — another customer mentioned that something was completely unacceptable as she had waited an hour for her appointment to begin. She was right, she arrived a few minutes after I did and I was already rinsed.
In the end, after I was escorted to a cash machine because they did not take card, the hair was okay, just not as blonde as I would have liked it. Later on I found sections of colour that I still don’t particularly like. I will not be going back.
The excitement of finding a salon in a new place. If you want to know the name, just ask.
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