Found this on Youtube. I loved seeing Robert Cromeans & Crew behind the scenes (I have a major man crush on Takashi…).
It’s a bit old (early 2000′s), but still has some interesting stuff. You prolly want to click through to Youtube to watch it though, it’s an hour and 21 minutes long.
Or RRCC for short. Or R2C2. Or…anyways, moving on. I’m a big RC fan (he’s so cool! /swoon), and I found these clips while bumming around the interwebs looking for something to entertain me.
That Cromeans guy sure is good at talking…
I want to be that good at talking.
It’s not hair related, but if you haven’t seen this movie, you should definitely check it out:
It’s about a guy who’s very good at talking. I think I’m gonna go watch it now, actually.
Thanks for the heap of knowledge and insider tips! I would really love to go back to the school I am registered at…and ask to speak to teachers, along with a few other things….but I dunno. I kind of feel douche-y (its a word! really!) doing that this late in the game. Maybe after I hit up (Name of school removed), I’ll see where the wind takes me. I just know that because their school is set up to mirror a modern working salon, that I might be a bit distracted by all the pretty colors! “My” school is pretty basic, dare I say “ghetto”. No, no..not ghetto. Just not as trendy as the hair school down the street. - They don’t update anything, they dont give you much info when you enroll, the tour is short and basic, and they dont offer financial aid. BUT it IS only $9,000-$10,000 to enroll. So I guess they figure it will sell itself?I’m not too worried about the clientele..as I know I have a community of trendier friends to practice on. - The one girl that I am talking to, that goes there…is constantly dowing the place now.Funny though..a few months ago, she was just GUSHING about how wonderful it was. But then some drama went down (of course) and she said that she basically sugar-coated everything, to get me to sign up so she could get a $100 beauty gift card (incentive program). And that the “TRUTH” is, her instructors play favorites, send you home all the time to incur overage charges with your hours, you dont get many clients, she is close to graduating and still doesnt feel confident with cutting..and ON and ON and OOOOOON. So now, everytime I get an email from her…I die a little inside. I’m worried about getting there and having a craptastic time. But that school has been around way longer than one down the street. So I do know that it can produce. Ugh. I know that she is just being a whiny, immature, over-grown pre-schooler. But still…she gets to me.ANYWAY. I am starting a blog as well. The hair world NEEDS us. Until I start school, mine will be mainly filled with my own ideas and “knowledge” (using that term WAY loosely) about all things hair/beauty. - I will give you the blog link once Ive created it. We can stay connected that way, or through email, or FB….the options are endless. I’m excited to have a “hair” friend who is actually in school! I love your blog and think its super funny/witty! So I half-expected you to blow me off since you can obviously rein in some much cooler than I! Thanks for not being a prick!
JessP.S. I’m changing my hair next week, for fall/school! Thought I’d mention that since its hair related. Right now (I should send you a pic) I have a ash blonde/ash brown magenta thing goin on. A friend of mine from Vegas, is a stylist and use to do hair there. She does it out of her home right now, and shes really good. Instead of bleaching hair, when adding bright colored highlights…she just uses extensions. - So I have Magenta extensions right now..theyre a pain in the ass to maneuver around, but better than bleach! So next week I am switching to a dark/brown (maybe with a hint of purple) base, with dark purple highlights starting at the back and graduating to a light purple as it reaches my face. I am the “creator” of this vision and am pretty proud of myself for coming up with my own idea instead of looking for pics. Heres to hoping it looks good! (“P.S.” thingies shouldnt be this long. My apologies.)
Don’t worry so much about the trendiness of the school. Sure, it would be awesome to go to a hip school, like the Paul Mitchell school or the Sassoon school, but all that really matters is the education you get. If you’re taught the basics very well, you can figure out the trendy haircuts on your own. And there are lots of educational resources on the internet, if you have the cash. (And boy can you can spend a lot on education!)
All the big hair companies have pay-for-play educational videos these days. Just go to the website of every company that makes professional hair products, and look around for their professional/educational page. Sometimes they have decent free videos too. Sam Villa has some freebies on his site that aren’t bad at all. Lots of people sell DVD’s too.
About your friend, I see a lot of that at my school too. I would say that 95% of the girls in my school sit around all day long, dissing the school and trash talking the teachers/staff. If you listen to them, you might think my school is run by hatemongering Nazis who hate young people (because they’re jealous of their youth), who punish students all the time (for no particular reason), they don’t teach you well, the kit you get is crap, they con you into buying more stuff and purposefully set things up so that you end up having to pay for extra time to make up the hours you need to graduate.
Bull@%!#.
The truth is that they all did it to themselves. I know it can be a bit intimidating to go into an environment where the large majority of students all seem to agree that the school is a heinous den of villany and treachery. It couldn’t possibly be that all the students are just crappy students, could it? Not that many?!
Yep.
It could be, and is. Most of the girls at my school spend their time chatting, hanging out, fixing their hair, avoiding doing any actual work, they don’t study, and they just plain don’t show up for school a lot. While at school they shout at each other across the salon floor, talk to each other about their sex lives, drugs, alcohol, and other trashy things while working on clients. A bunch of girls didn’t even come to school on Saturday for a long time! The salon runs Tuesday to Saturday. It’s mandatory that you come on Saturday. And they just didn’t show up because they didn’t feel like it, every single Saturday.
Almost all of the senior class in school right now is on academic probation. For real!
Now, I don’t know if this applies to your friend, since I don’t know your friend. It could be that she is a great student and that school is crap. But from my experience, that’s not the conclusion I would jump to first. (And it sounds like you don’t entirely believe her stories either.)
I’m going to digress a bit here… You know, a lot of people expect guys to be amazing hair stylists, and a lot of girls feel that guys have an unfair advantage and succeed in this industry more easily than girls. People just expect me to be amazing (and while I may be some day, I’m definitely not amazing right now!), and think I have a free ride through school and the industry, they think teachers are nicer to me and give me better marks than them because I was born with two different chromosomes. Not because I work harder than them.
I think the school atmosphere is the perfect example of why this appears to be true. Socially, men are pushed away from careers like being a hair stylist – you have to fight against the current to become a hair stylist if you’re a guy, because there is a lot of real social pressure trying to stop you. But a lot of girls go into cosmetology on a whim, or because they like playing with their own hair, or because they think it will be an easy career where they can just hang out with their friends all day long.
So from a birds eye view, you might think it’s true: There are a few guys that seem to be doing better than average, a few girls doing better than average, and a LOT of girls just doing average and below average.
But it only looks that way because guys are pre-screened to weed out the ones who don’t really care. No man just “falls in” to being a hair stylist. A lot of women do. And you run into a lot of them in hair school. What you’re really seeing is proof that people who are determined have better than average chances of succeeding.
I can tell by how you write, and the fact that you e-mailed me, that you really do care about being a hair stylist. Don’t let the girls who don’t care stop you from being a great hair stylist! And don’t let their attitudes rub off on you. As I’m learning more and more everyday, this is an industry where you determine your own level of success. I’m sure you’ve heard that phrase a million times before (I know I have! Hello, entry level jobs at every company I’ve ever worked at…), but in the hair industry it’s really, really true. And the bottom line is, all the responsibility is on you, nobody is looking out for you, and a lot of the girls in cosmetology school are about as responsible and independent as a a member of the Royal Family.
Well I think I’ve rambled long enough, time for me to get off my soap box!
And it sounds like your upcoming hair chance would be great material for your blog – make sure to take lots of before and after pictures! See if you can get some in-progress pictures too!
Ps. I don’t think there’s anyone cooler to rein-in than someone as passionate about hair as you clearly are.
Pps. This only seems appropriate, after all my ranting about the majority of cosmetology students:
Jess, a future professional and reader of the blog, asked me some questions about going to cosmetology school. I’m answering here (with her permission of course!), because this might be interesting to anyone considering going to hair school.
Great, I will only be about 3 months behind you I think…you started in June, correct? I am going to another school in my area on Tues., to compare to the school I am registered at…if I get a better “feeling” at that school, I might switch! If there is anything that you have learned/discovered that you didnt realize would be an issue or of importance, please let me know so that I can make sure to ask about it! - I also read another girls blog (who has already graduated) where she stated that if they turn a client away, they are to clock out and go home! She wasnt comfortable with this clients texture or the specific cut that the client wanted, so she didnt want to screw it up. And they made her clock out and go home! I think that’s ridiculous. How would that sort of situation play out at your school?Anyway, I have lots of other questions but I will pace myself and space them out. Oh and I was going to tell you, you should check on Craigslist for mannequin heads to use for practice! I almost bought a few just to practice on before school, but decided to wait. I couldnt find any for sale in my area, so I just did an advanced search with google and looked for heads for sale on craigslist..and then emailed those people and asked if they were willing to ship. There are lots of students who dropped out of school, and just looking to sell their kits for cheap. Its something to look into!Alright..have a nice day off! ttyl!!JessP.S. I will be using the Milady books…I’m sure it has the same basic info as Pivot Point. Oh and how many hours do you need, to become licensed? Its the equivalent of about 10 months, for me.
Jess;
I started in June, so you would be three months behind me – but that doesn’t mean you’re necessarily going to be exactly three months behind me in skills. You might learn things in a different order than I did!
Definitely go check out all the schools you could potentially go to – and be wary, most of the admissions girls from hair schools (at least here) are almost like army recruiters. They are usually super peppy and know how to get you really pumped up, because they are trying to sell their school to you.
Ask if you can talk to the teachers you would have. A good curriculum is only as good as the teachers who teach it. Try to talk to them and see if you think they can give you a quality education. The school I’m at has decent teachers, but when I went to Vegas for NAHA, they sent classes and teachers from every school (it’s a chain of schools in Canada), and I really didn’t get a great feeling from a lot of the other teachers I met. So even in the same chain of schools, it can vary from location to location.
And about that girl having problems turning away a client… I smell bologna. Of course you would be allowed to turn away a client in school, if you had a good reason. If it was your jilted ex lover, or a crazy homeless person who keeps grabbing your scissors, or a guy who is being really inappropriate with you, etc. No school worth it’s salt wouldn’t let you tell those clients to take a hike. More likely, they would have kicked them out before you got the chance.
But turning a client down because you’re not comfortable with their hair is a load of bollocks, imho. If you were a licensed stylist in a real salon then I might accept that as a valid reason to turn someone down (but then, if you were a fully fledged stylist I would hope they would have enough experience to tackle something like that), but in a school environment, where you’re learning, you’re just not going to be “comfortable” doing everything. That’s just the way it is, and I am willing to bet that what happened with the other girl you mentioned was something like this:
I see this exact thing happen at school fairly often. It is a very challenging place, and it demands a lot out of you – it’s like having to jump out of a speeding car and hit the ground running. You have to grow as a person, you have to keep up, and you can’t afford to second guess yourself or stress yourself out, because the second you do that you’ll trip and never catch up.
I’m very glad I didn’t enroll until now, because I really think I wouldn’t have had the maturity and experience to handle this environment even one or two years ago.
And the fact is, a school is full of students! You’re not expected to be master stylists, or to already know exactly what to do. And the people who come in to get their hair cut in a school know that. Sure, they may not be very happy with you if you give them a bad haircut, but that’s no excuse throwing up your hands and giving up.
So expect hair school to be very, very challenging. And remember, that’s not a bad thing at all! It weeds out the people you’d rather not be going to school with anyway. 
And as far as hours, my course is 1400 hours in school, after which I need another 1400 hours of apprenticing before I can become a licensed stylist in Canada.
I hope this helps! And feel free to ask any other questions you have!
I have all these unanswered questions, and all these techniques I want to learn. I want to absorb as much as I can about hair. But I don’t know how. It seems like you can’t learn anything without spending a lot of money in this industry – the knowledge is out there, but it’s metered out and more expensive than oil. I can’t afford to take extra classes, I’m already about $18,000 in debt in student loans to pay for hair school, and I am finding it difficult how I can’t…learn at the pace I want to learn at. If I could go at my own pace I would be an amazing stylist in one year. And I mean that not to boast, and not because I think I have ridiculous talent – but because I devote myself 110% to what I do. I live, breathe, and sweat what I do in life, and there isn’t one minute of one day that I’m not thinking about it. I don’t get burned out. I’m a shark, I do one thing, and one thing only, but I am very good at it: Learn. And it is really frustrating me how school keeps me going at a pace I feel handicaps me. 
I don’t want to just try and try and figure out how to cut hair by myself and then have someone grade my efforts after I’m done. Even if I do progress that way, slowly, I can miss HUGE, basic, foundational things. Like how to properly control your shears, how to cut on the outstroke, all these techniques and bits of experience that people can go years without learning…
I am fantastically skilled at learning things, but only when I can learn the way I want to learn. I don’t do well in other systems. For example, I did beyond horrible in high school. But I learned to make my own guitar (from scratch), without knowing anything about making instruments, or woodworking. And I did so well because I was directing my own education. I was going at my own pace by my own means. Maybe I should find a way to get a bunch of my own mannequin heads and just practice my own stuff after school. The school said I can practice coloring mannequins, if I pay for the color, so they aren’t resistant to my wanting to learn more… it’s just that they have a certain way they need to run the school, and I don’t fit into rigid systems very well.
I am still unsure how I feel about all the secrecy in the industry. Nobody wants to share tips or advice (not without charging a healthy amount of money, anyway). I understand this from a business perspective, but I come from a world of photography and music and art – a world where it is a mark of good character to be a teacher, to share your knowledge and experience and advice with everyone as much as you can, for the betterment of the craft. I come from a world that loves the art and craft of a thing, more than making money.
Maybe that’s why photographers like Joe McNally are living comfortably, and hairdressers like Robert Cromeans are living lavishly. I think I want to be a teacher though. If you love what you do it is dishonest to sequester it away in your mind. If you love what you do it is only right and proper to share it, and all the knowledge you have about it, with everyone else who loves it as much as you. If you really love it, it doesn’t matter that you don’t make as much money sharing ideas and experience freely. And you can’t say that it’s an immature concept, the free exchange of the craft, because so many great artists and great people embrace and champion it as the center of their personal code of ethics.
I’m rambling now, aren’t I? Oh well. When I am an awesome hairdresser I will share my knowledge. For free. With everyone that wants to know. I will make my money by being a great hairdresser, not by holding secrets.
Ps. Here is the guitar I built. I know it has nothing to do with hair, but I’m proud of it! I named it Drippy.
(ignore the dates on some of the pictures, I built Drippy last december. Just used a cheap camera and didn’t set the date to document it – didn’t want to bring my nice camera into all that sawdust!)
