Week one at salon Prive

Last time I made a post, I was just about to go into my first day at the salon. So far, there hasn’t been a whole lot for me to do throughout the day. Legally, I’m not allowed to do anything related to the client, so I can’t mix color or touch the client at all. I’ve chatted a bit with the clients when the conversation between Mandy and them got interesting. I’m shadowing Mandy, and she’s a very laid back and genuine person. She has all sorts of stuff to talk about. I’ve done a lot of people watching, and learning how to be bored. For the first few hours of each day, I’ve ended up just sitting and watching stuff happen in the salon. It’s sort of boring, but sometimes it’s interesting to listen in on other people’s conversations. Mandy knows all of her clients super well and so they have a lot to talk about. Usually it’s interesting listening to their discussions, but I’ve had a lot of down time. I ended up spending a lot of time each day on my phone, at least in the morning, just because there’s nothing else for me to do. On Wednesday and Thursday, Mandy had time in between clients, so she asked me if there was anything I was interested in learning about. On Wednesday, Mandy got out a mannequin head and taught me how to curl hair with a three barrel curling iron. Thursday, I learned how to curl hair with a flat iron. On those days, I didn’t have anything to do in the afternoon either. On Friday, I learned how to fishtail braid, and I spent some time practicing braiding on the mannequin head (her name is Helen). Then, I switched from fishtail braiding to french braiding. I had no experience with french braids or fishtail braids, but I knew the basic principles, so I sort of taught myself how to french braid. I spent three and a half hours on Friday just doing tight little french braids down the mannequin’s hair. I almost got finished with a full head of braids, but I had a few left to do. On Saturday, about an hour into the day, I got out the mannequin and finished braiding. Then I went back and redid a few of the first braids I did just to clean them up. I’ve gotten a lot better at french braiding, but it’s still super hard to do on anyone who doesn’t have stick-straight hair. I ended up taking out the braids later in the day, and I straightened Helen’s hair. Something that I’ve noticed is that each day is pretty different from the next. Mandy knows all of her clients really well, so it’s a lot more fun to do work since you get to chat the whole time. Hairstyling is hard on your body though. Apparently almost every hairstylist has to have carpal tunnel surgery at some point, or even several times throughout their career. The pay for hairstyling is very reliant on how popular of a stylist you are. Mandy has a waitlist, so shes pretty popular. Some days, she will have only two or three clients who are doing lots of color work on their hair, but other days, like Friday, she will have five or six clients, most of which were just simple haircuts. Mandy also has full control over her schedule. She works wednesday through saturday, seven hours a day, but she handles all of her appointments and scheduling separately from the salon. I’m fairly sure that the salon gets a cut of what she makes, but for the most part, it seems like mandy works for herself. She does have two other jobs though, so I don’t think hairstyling is enough of a career to support a family and pets and whatnot. I’m super interested in the chemistry of hair dying, but thats not something Mandy can really teach me about because we don’t have enough time, plus, we cant dye any of the mannequins because they try to reuse them as many times as possible. Overall, it’s been going well. My next and final day of my project will be Wednesday, and then it’s time to present!