Wording

I am an inquisitive, skeptical guy by nature. I had a good time with the product rep from the largest Canadian hair care line when she was in the school giving us all an introduction to their line. I won’t get into details – suffice to say by the end she was probably crossing her fingers behind her back hoping I wouldn’t ask anymore questions. “This is our flat iron spray, and it smells just – ” “Does it contain glycerin?” “I…umm…I’m not…entirely…sure… but just smell the wonderful smell…”.

Everyone’s selling something in this industry and wording plays a big role in whether you perceive someone as a salesman or an educator. I’m going to use an easy example to demonstrate how insidious the wording and the renaming of “salesman” to “Educator” can be. I’m sure we’ve all heard this “fact”:

“Clients are 60% more likely to return when you have sold them a product.”

Up-do Fillers

So we got fillers to use in hair styles and updo’s in Cycle 3. They’re like scrubby pads for doing the washing up… But more expensive.

And I found out that they make you look AMAZINGLY BAD if you put them over your face. How bad? This is me without a filler on my head:

 

Me

 

This is me wearing a filler like a weird bankrobber:

 

Instantly gain 100 lbs!

Come on, give us a kiss! *smack smack*

Yes I’m wearing my glasses overtop the filler. That’s how we roll here in the RD.

 

Video Review: Sam Villa Shears

Watch in fullscreen to catch the annotations!

Since starting to shear-shop in August, I’ve played with everything I could get my hands on. You know in Wayne’s World, how Wayne asks to play with the guitar at the store and the clerk sighs “…again?”? That’s me at every salon store in this town, and the next one over.

My school has a shear dude and also carries a brand (which shall remain nameless) and I spent time  playing with a variety of those shears as well. I borrowed shears from other stylists whenever I could. I talked to every stylist I could find about what shears they use and why, and asked if I could play with them a bit. (I am a shear junkie now!)

When I started my search I knew nothing about shears or what I really wanted, and now I know what just about every shear feels like (in my hands, at least), and how a number of different brands and price points cut and wear.

I gotta say, out of all of them, these are the most comfortable shears to my hands. Of course, my hands are twice as big as the average hair stylist’s hands… So your mileage may vary.

And of course I’m not saying these are the “most comfortable shears ever”, I’m just saying I like them. You might hate them! And I can’t judge their functionality yet, because I just bought them, so maybe they’ll dull super fast, or something horrible will happen and they’ll disintegrate in my hands, to counteract how awesome the shears seem to be on the surface.

But there’s no reason to think they will, and if they do cut well, and wear well, I will certainly be getting a 5.5″ pair down the road, to go with my 6.25″ pair.

I’ll use them on clients at school for a month or two and report back on how they perform.

New Shears!

My new Kasho Blue’s are here!

They are fine shears, and with them I got a little Kasho razor and a leather Kasho holster. I was impressed with the place I ordered them from: precisionshears.com

After I had ordered, I had a question about shipping (because I was expecting to see more information in the ordering process, as you do in most online stores) so I emailed the company, and got a phone call back after the weekend, answering my questions.  That’s pretty good customer service in my opinion.

My stuff arrived quickly, and was very well packed. I’d definitely recommend them to anyone thinking of buying shears online.

Cool Asian Hair

Wax. Hair wax. It’s my product of choice for my own hair. I like matte waxes, because they hold better. I have hair that is too heavy and curly for most products to hold up, and having the lifestyle and personality I do, I can’t shellac my head with a can of hairspray when I leave in the morning – if I did that, once the style fell apart, I wouldn’t be able to push it back into shape again. I’m a re-shaping kind of guy, and I am a big fan of the Asian mullet. (Or “Cool Asian Hair” as I call it.) All the cool guys in Vancouver had it when I lived there, and it grew on me

So I like my wax. I have tried a lot of different kinds, I know the asian guys swear by brands like Gatsby and Shiseido, but it’s too much of a hassle for me to get so I just use Sebastian. My favorite was Sebastion X-tah Crude Clay (which I think literally was clay mixed with wax), but it’s been discontinued so I’m back to using whatever super-holding wax I happen to have at the moment.

Where am I going with this? We don’t have any good wax products in the school salon. We have a shine wax pomade (which makes no sense to me – a pomade is pomade, and wax is wax. Mix the two and you just get a slightly waxy pomade…) and that’s about it. There isn’t a single product in the salon, not even in the retail area, that fills this product niche.

There is not much in the salon for styling guys hair in general actually, it’s a bit stuck in the 90′s. Hair gel (blegh!) and spiking the hair up is what most of the girls do to guys. But there isn’t anything wet-set or 90′s looking about C.A.H:

Cool Asian Hair!

More Cool Asian Hair!

I think I’m the only advocate of Cool Asian Hair at school, because nobody seems to know how to cut or style it. Perhaps it‘s true that you have to go to an asian stylist to get a good C.A.H. style. But I will master this style! And I’m halfway there already! I know how to style it from years of trying to make my own hair do C.A.H.

And I’m slowly figuring out how to get the right kind of layers and texture. I have to admit, I thought it would be a lot easier to figure out this hairstyle than it’s turning out to be… it is extremely dependent on the cut. Without the right cut, it’s just hard or impossible to style it correctly.

Also, the products used to style your hair like this don’t really… wash out… per say. The really good waxes and the moving rubber stuff, once you put it in you’re hair, it’s going to be in there for awhile. No matter what shampoo you use. (That’s another thing my salon friends didn’t understand. “Well use a clarifying shampoo to get rid of it, silly! It can’t be that hard to get out!” . Oh yes it is!)

The hardcore wax is a bit intimidating to people who are only used to gel and mousse and hairspray, and not much else.  The test of a truly awesome hair product for C.A.H. is if it can turn your hair into this:

Troll Doll!

The good stuff will turn your hair into troll doll hair that you can push around and shape however you want, and it just sort of magically stays up – no backcombing! And you can continue shaping it throughout the day to some extent.

I just find wax to be the best product for this out of the spectrum of hair products. (Pomades, shine serums, hairspray, gums, waxes, mousses, gels, glues, etc, and the new kid on the block: All the stuff with “fiber paste” or “reshapeable paste” in the name. The gum and fiber stuff is promising but lacks the gravity defying hold, and weightlessness of wax.)

And if you’re trying to get into the growing male market share of the salon industry, the good waxes almost sell themselves to guys! They don’t smell like “girly” hair products. They smell like clay, and dirt, and earth! Manly smells!

They come in big, manly containers! Look at that manly hexagonal lid! It’s like a big bolt!

Sebastian X-tah Crude Clay

They don’t have girly names like “Sleeking Serum”, they have manly names like “Crude Clay”. Names for manly guys who spend their spare time sawing boards in half, and digging holes in the ground!

And most attractive to some guys – it’s an “invisible” product. You can’t see it on the hair, guys don’t have to worry about going around smelling like a fruit basket, they can keep telling their friends: “Oh no, I don’t style my hair. My hair just does this.”

Well, most of them are manly anyway. Just don’t show them the Gatsby Moving Rubber.

It's Pink!