HAIR UPDATE[:]
Happy Monday, everyone!
I'm here to give you a hair update, kind of like a weather update. I've already told you about my hairy adventuresfrom platinum blond to a Louise Brooks bob, from black tresses to boycutsto Freja layers, to plaits of hair to make a bun, to Sean Paul braids etc etc... I think that I can say that I have a hard time making up my mind when it comes to my hair. I've been looking for my 'look' for a long time, like the holy grail. I often look back and think "that cut wasn't so bad", and then I relapse, I cut my hair again. Instead of thinking about what looked good in pictures, I should think about how it looked in day-to-day life.
I wasn't very good at hair tutorials until recently. It's kind of weird since I know how to use my ten fingers pretty well, but braiding my hair is another story. It's really quite difficult. A few months ago, in September to be exact, I wanted to get my hair back to the length it was when I got married. I looked high and low for a hair salon in Paris where they can grow your hair out faster than your shadow: Vip Extensions. Here's the secret: you've been wondering about my hair for a while now, but the truth is that they aren't mine... crazy, right?
I thought that it was a lovely and impressive experience, overall. Impressive because I went to the hair salon that morning with a bob and I left with my hair straight as a baguette down to my back that afternoon. It took 5 hours, 180 locks, to add 40 cm of hair to my head, added one by one with keratin, (it's like a little shiny, stiff rectangle at my roots). I have a lot of hair to start with, so a lot had to be used in order for it to look as natural as possible! Some call the pieces of keratin "grains of rice", but I thought they were more like "jumbo-sized" grains of rice. I'd rather call them small, stiff 1.5 by 0.5 cm rectangles.
Marina did my hair. She gave me lots of advice on how to take care of it and did a good job explaining. She must have sensed that I was kind of lost and didn't quite know what I was getting myself into.
You can't get your hair wet for the following 48 hours and since you can't help but play with your hair, I promise that dry shampoo will be your best friend.
The first two nights after getting them were awful. I questioned why I did it, I had been warned that sleeping on keratin pieces is super painful. I therefore slept on my face, which is not easy.
48 hours later, I washed my hair and hallelujah! It was like magic! When I got out of the shower, I put a towel on my head like turban, did my makeup, then moved on to do my hair and then: I realised I had curly hair (okay, they're not mine, but still, kinda). I hadn't seen them like that since I was 17. You know that our hair goes through different cycles during our life. When I was little and a teen, I had amazingly curly hair. Then they changed when I was an adult but if I dry them with a diffuser and then use salt water spray, my hair is wavy, thanks Cut by Fred for all your advice, since my hair is pretty flexible. But this, my friends, was like going back in time. I was 17 again!
I'm telling you this so that you know that when you have extensions, you can't do everything with them. To start, you must detangle them morning and night using a brush with two different lengths of bristles so you don't pull on your hair. This may not be news to some of you but it was to me. I found this lovely brand, Bachca. Then, you have to forget about Garnier Fructis and all that other grocery store garbage full of silicone that smothers your hair that's already been a little shaken up with the heat from the keratin. I left with Extensions Vip shampoo and conditioner. The smell is amazing and it lasts a long time... and then I do hair masks at home that I apply to the ends.
Between washing my hair, I use my new best friend, dry shampoo. L'Oréals is great since it doesn't leave white Karl Lagerfeld-like streaks in my hair. I also started using Bumble & Bumble's dry spray kind of like hair spray. It doesn't make your hair stiff but rather calms the frizziness.
And now, if I want a more 'sophisticated' look, I use my new magic tool... Fred had actually already used it on my hair for my wedding but now I have my own. I think it's like a curling iron for dummies. Big or small pieces, you just have to wrap your hair around it, wait a few seconds, and BAM you look like Maria Carey (90's era). Okay, yeah it does kind of look like an adult toy but it really is like a magic wand if you want to be the Harry Potter of hair, you need the Ghd creativ curl wand...
And to be honest, I've become so confident that I now color my hair and extensions too, I'm just careful to use the treatment product only on the ends.
There you have it. One of the problems was that I got my 'teen' hair back, but I didn't really want that look. If I don't try to put myself together, wearing jeans, tennis shoes, a hoodie and tote bag, my man'll ask me where I left my skateboard... so I do try. But strange enough, I feel like the length and layers make me want to be more feminine. My hair is often down which rarely happened before, I used to always have ideas for how to put it up in a bun. I hope that this crazy hair experience has taught me to take care of my hair and accept the femininity of letting my hair down. My own hair has really grown, I think that it might touch my shoulders now. I wonder how it'll be when I go back, I'll let you know once the extensions are out. One thing is sure: I haven't had as much fun with my hair as these last few months... so now the question is, what will my next look be...?
Thank you to the lovely Kihou to have encouraged me to make the change, to Sardjan for their trust and to Marina and her professionalism and expertise. They're opening a new salon in Geneva too!
FYI, each extension itself costs between 3.50 and 7 euros depending on where it comes from, the quality, and the length. There's no precise number of needed extensions, it depends on how much hair you have to start with. It's easy to ask for a quote. You can send a picture via social media, by mail, or even by text. Of course, extensions do have a price. You may make several payments, which is good news. Depending on how you care for your hair, the quality of the hair you choose and how fast it grows, you may keep your hair looking nice up to 7 months.
Anyways, besides the first difficult 48 hours, I don't regret these last four months at all and I think I might even wait another month before taking them out.
Translated by Whitney Bolin