Before and After

consulting with Santana

I have been coloring my hair since I was in my 30's and the first gray hairs started popping out! I ran through various shades of brown and red over the years until I have now completely lost track of my actual natural hair color. (My father used to describe it as chestnut brown; that's all I know.) Besides, after two sons who played all kinds of contact sports throughout middle school, high school and college, the number of gray hairs on my head has probably surpassed the natural brown ones anyway. Really, what does my original natural color have to do with it anymore?

I was curious from time to time growing tired of the chains of monthly touch-up routines, but never enough to justify actually letting it grow out. There was always an event around the corner that would involve photographs and I wasn't sure I was willing to live with an ugly mistake being recorded for posterity in someone else's wedding album or graduation photos.

But once I knew I was moving to a place where no one knew my checkered hair history, I became once again intrigued with the idea of letting my hair go natural just to see what's what. I told my hairdresser in NJ what I was considering and she absolutely refused to be a party to it, forbidding me to even do it once I finally moved. (If she reads this blog post I half expect her to pop over and give me a good dressing down over it.)

So I waited until my move was complete and went to my local mall salon and had a consultation with Santana. We decided the best strategy was to highlight the crap out of my hair with a ashy blonde to blur the line between my current shade of reddish brown and the new growth. We also decided to cut my hair  shorter to further decrease the playing field of growth. I had just seen Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby and the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Punk Costume Institute exhibit last month in New York so we decided to go with a 20's bob (cut) with a 70's punk attitude (color). The last time by the way I put this much thought into a hair transition was when I grew my bangs out in the 8th grade!

6 hours, 108 foils, 3 cappuccinos, 2 rounds of conditioner, 1 toner application and 3 or 4 inches taken off the bottom and voila! After all, I had only recently sold most of my earthly possessions and moved half way across the world. Clearly what I needed now was a little more change in my life!