It’s been a long time since I posted for a few simple reasons. I mainly fell out of habit due to traveling a lot and dividing my time between salon life and my life as an educator. A lot of people do a lot more and still have time for impeccable social media involvement, but for me I was starting to feel a phoniness about it and it’s just not how I wanted to spend my time. Then as I quietly stepped down from my teaching position, I didn’t feel like I had a voice anymore, or maybe I wanted to keep that voice to myself.
Tonight was a really incredible night at Austin’s Elevate Hair event, which is supported by the Hairbrained community. It was a really nice opportunity for me to get a little taste of everything in the industry and for me to reflect on the choices I’ve made in my career. In short, I am really, really happy with where I am right now. I’ve had a really exciting career and I’ve seen this industry from a lot of angles. But having a solid home base, with so many coworkers I adore and that inspire me and push me daily, that’s a really special thing. I ran into a stylist from a salon I taught at a few years back in Houston, and it was really cool to have someone tell me how skills I taught had actually changed how they cut hair. I really do appreciate the time I was able to spend teaching and the ability to pass on techniques that were passed down to me. But I also know that stepping back was the right thing to do. This past year has been about working my skill set, growing with my clientele and reconnecting with the things that inspired me to become a hairstylist. And this next year will be about my (growing) family. But it’s a pretty awesome feeling to be in a position where you can see many other paths that you could be on, and to still be satisfied with the road you’ve taken.
I have a lot of cool stuff I’ve been up to, but just never posted about: training with ZGAT this year, this event tonight and also a little video work. I wouldn’t expect any posts soon, but hopefully I can get some updates going in the near future. And thanks, always, to Hairbrained for being an awesome community and keeping things real.
We spent our first day there taking a long walk from Chinatown to downtown and hopped a ferry to Toronto Island. The view was amazing and the weather was beautiful despite needing to bundle up.
Gorgeous view from the ferry!
But enough about us, let’s get on to the education!
I consider myself very fortunate! There were only four students (including myself) and we had three different teachers throughout the week. For me, this was the ideal situation. Each teacher had slightly different tastes and preferences and I feel like I learned a lot from each of them. Gina was our teacher on the first day. She had been with the academy the longest (maybe 16 years? I don’t remember exactly) and gave us a lot of background about the Toronto Academy, which is very highly regarded among the Sassoon Academies. For example, every year each of the Sassoons submit a collection on a $0 budget and Toronto has won the competition the last three years in a row. Gina had an incredible knack for reading hair and working with it creatively. She also went through all the foundation information, correcting some things I’ve had backwards in my brain. In beauty school I trained with Paul Mitchell, so the Sassoon techniques and shapes were similar to what I had learned with, but in some ways actually less rigid, which surprised me. Everything as very relate-able to actual cuts we would do in the salon. She also demo-ed some cool hair cuts.
Day 2 we had Karen demo-ing and then our first models. Karen is a very cool, very funny and down to earth stylist. She talked to us about tips on keeping our techniques crisp and places of emphasis on the face for our cutting lines. It’s always nice for me to see a teacher about my height because I can snag some body position tips from watching.
Then after lunch my first model came in, Madeliene. She had very curly hair which hadn’t been cut in over three months. This was a tricky first haircut for me because I always cut curly hair with very low tension and I point cut a lot! High tension + straight lines in textured hair… oh my!
But I got through it and I think she looked pretty good! I don’t think I will be cutting Richard’s hair with high tension any time soon but maybe for curly lady hair..? I’ll definitely give it a try.
And I even got to do two very classic bobs, which was one of the reasons I wanted to come to the Sassoon Academy. Both above and below the models had extremely dense hair, the one above had very wavy hair. These cuts both took a long time but I was very proud. I’m glad Paolo was there to guide me through them and take two very extreme angled cuts with weird layering in areas and bring them to a more moderate, clean shape.
Above Paolo is closing out the class with one final demo. Paolo had a very calm but very direct demeanor and he was great to watch. He showed me a lot of great finishing techniques on my dense-haired ladies. And in general, it was great to just hear him talk about hair.
Final look for Paolo’s model.
Here I am with my classmates! Jenna-Wade, Annah, me and Justine.
Rachel Lynn Carr 