Before Hair: The Makings of a Texture Engineer

Before hair, I can’t think of any one thing I have ever been so focused on.  Well, with one exception.  The summer after my sophomore year of college I was awarded a Brackenridge grant from the University of Pittsburgh to create my own art installation.  So basically, I was a professional artist for three months.  I often say that this project was the most fulfilling of my life, but the mental and physical fatigue is not something to be looked over.  By the end of that summer, I was certain, beyond doubt, that I wanted to be a hair stylist.  I knew I wanted to do something visual and creative, but that I wasn’t strong enough for anything that involved long hours being alone with my art.  Richard would pick me up at the studio every day after 8-10 hour shifts and I would not want to leave, despite being hungry and dirty and barely being able to string a sentence together.  It’s hard to explain, because I loved it, I really did, it just couldn’t have been sustainable.  I couldn’t close my eyes without seeing the intricate bark textures I’d been creating all day (like when you play Tetris too much).

I keep so busy with hair that sometimes I stop seeing new things.  That’s when I look back to my other loves for inspiration.  Sculpture.  Found art.  Poetry.  Short fiction.  Music.  I wanted to share some of my old pieces from that summer.  Mainly made from duct tape, newspaper and stuff from the hardware store.  It was a sexual assault advocacy piece intertwining my love for writing, shapes and textures.  It took about 2 1/2 months to complete and then showed for a couple weeks at the William Pitt Union on campus.  Enjoy!

Notes from Sebastian Training, January 2014

Yes, there were times where I felt like I had flippers for hands. Yes, I was mentally exhausted from so much new information. And yes, it was the perfect start to 2014, at least in terms of my career.

First off, I left Pittsburgh in the nick of time! I have never experienced subzero temperatures so I was thrilled to be flying away as Pittsburgh thermometers were descending to unfamiliar depths. But with the unusual iciness it was not easy to get to Los Angeles! But after a few risks and a few miracles, I made it, and was soon sharing a shuttle to Woodland Hills with some of my favorites: Meghan, Josh and Tony! Such a positive and fun group to be around. They are so easy to be around, it’s easy for me to forget that I’d just met them last summer and that this training was technically my first.

Shortly after, I was reunited with Anthony, Isa, Matthew, Oscar and Heather Rae the next morning, and of course getting to see all of the core team, Christina and Carole, and a bunch of other cool dudes on Urban and Design Team that I don’t know quite as well.

Training started with a wonderful talk from Stephen Moody, the charismatic and successful Brit who has been all throughout recent hair history. His stage presence was inspiring. Then we jumped into the nitty gritty and got our hands on the blades and the shears and I felt like I had flippers for hands, trying so hard to get the cuts perfect. Over the next few days, more cuts, some styling and them presenting in pairs.

Throughout training, and really the last few months, I have felt weighed down by big decisions, most of the decisions circling around the concept of who I want to be. The last day of training I had a bit of a moment, where a lot clicked for me. We had an acting coach come in to guide us through some skits. I had a lot of fun with it and was very eager to jump up and do everything. The coach had started to rely on me as a goto Ginny pig. But then all of a sudden he wanted us to speak about things we loved. Could be anything, silly, deep, person, place, hobby, anything. I cycled through my brain thinking about what I could actually talk about without getting too emotional or sounding too crazy and nothing seemed like it was really representing me and really, at the heart of the matter, I am an extremely private person. Ultimately, I am fairly open to any specifics but always afraid of being type cast, put in a box.

Realizing how much I actually did hate talking about myself was somewhat eye opening. Of course the coach called on me first, and I gave him the, don’tmakemego eyes, and he let me off the hook for awhile. When everyone else went I thought a lot about what a love and what represents me as a person and as a hair stylist. I came up with a pretty good answer, I ended up not sharing it though because I got a good opportunity to talk about storing food in my purse on end and took the easy out.

But what I would’ve said is that what I love is helping people find themselves. I love looking in someone’s eyes and seeing what they need and knowing when I can give them what they need and knowing when they need time. I love healing people who hurt, distracting people from pain, getting people to think about what is important to them, which often times makes them realize they have most if not everything they need. I love making people feel the truth that they are special.

And that is why I started doing hair.

🙂 🙂 🙂

I <3 My Clients

I was gone from the salon for about two weeks from training with Sebastian, assisting on some NAHA shoots in LA and gallivanting around Austin, TX. I will post more on that later. On the journey home, husband and I contracted food poisoning in the Houston airport…. Worst trip home ever after a phenomenal trip. But basically, I got back, went to the doctor and rested one day and was right back at work the following day, nice and early for a wedding, followed by a few hours of rest and then my salons belated holiday party for a little while. I disappointed everyone by forgetting it was an ugly sweater party. Everyone was expecting something bright and outrageous and I showed up in flowing black layers like some kind of goth pilgrim (I don’t know….)

But the point is, I was fairly worn down and still on a mostly liquid/cracker diet when I went into work today. I hate to feel physically worn down when I start the day.

And yet, as soon as I got to the salon and saw my jam packed day, I was just delighted. It is truly magical, the relationships you build in this industry. To be able to look at my day and see all these people that I have such a fondness for… It is awesome and it is exactly why I wanted to do this job.

Thank you, to my dear clients, for brightening my work days! And when any of you are having a down day, you know I will always do what I can to give you a little spark back. 🙂

<3<3<3
Rachel Lynn Carr

Vidal Sassoon Scholarship Entry

This was my entry for the Vidal Sassoon/Beauty Changes Lives Scholarship Competition. The competition grants ten winners an opportunity to train at one of the Sassoon academies in North America, providing $5,000 of support for travel, expenses and tuition.

I was not selected as a winner, but this entry was still a labor of love and friends and family are still coming to me and remarking on ways it inspired them, so I wanted to share it today. Enjoy!

Next Saturday: Fundraiser for City of Hope/Diabetes Research

Greetings Pittsburgh friends!

Next Saturday, November 30, my former teacher/current boss, Derek Piekarski, will be hosting a fundraiser for City of Hope at his new salon space. City of Hope and the P&G Professional Hair Care lines have been partnering to search for a cure for diabetes with the Hope is in Style Campaign. Come on out if you are in town that night, hang out with a bunch of cool people, drink some beer, and help support the cause!

Diabetes is a disease that hits particularly close to home for me. I grew up in a family with a lot of diabetics, and I always assumed everyone had diabetic relatives until I went away to college and realized how many misconceptions there are regarding diabetes. Most of my aunts and uncles are diabetic, on both sides of my family, as well as three out of my four grandparents, one parent and one sibling.

As many of you know, I am biracial so the two sides of my extended family have very little in common. My mother is Chinese, and one of the few non-diabetics in her family. Two of her siblings are diabetic, but are quite slim/petite. They have Type 1 Diabetes. They eat well, and mostly always have, yet they still need to watch carefully (including making sure they don’t eat too much fruit or other sources of natural sugar). Her little brother was diabetic from a young age, and despite his healthy lifestyle and decades of taking insulin he is awaiting a new kidney and liver. He is in his mid-fifties with two teenage sons.

The Caucasian side of my family is ripe with diabetes. They mostly have Type 2. Both of my grandparents on this side of the family were diabetic. My grandparents both died in their sixties. And more recently, my father’s older sister passed away, also in her late sixties, after at least a decade of regular in home dialysis treatments. Dialysis is a common treatment for diabetics. Basically you are hooked up to a machine that filters your blood because your organs are no longer able to.

My father is also diabetic, but with the help of my mother has always worked very, very hard to eat well, and is on his way to being the first in his immediate family to make it to 70 in a few years. He does have the genetic predisposition towards diabetes, but he is also a Vietnam Veteran and Veteran’s Affairs acknowledges a spike in diabetes for Vietnam Veterans due to exposure to Agent Orange. He probably would have been diabetic eventually regardless, but who can say for sure whether he may have had a few more years disease free? And regardless is it is true for him, countless other veterans may have diabetes due to Agent Orange exposure.

During my sister’s first pregnancy she was diagnosed with Type 3 Diabetes, which is the only sort of diabetes that isn’t necessarily lifelong. Type 3 develops while a woman is pregnant and then usually goes away after, but it is a warning sign that the woman may develop Type 2 later on.

I tell clients that I try to eat well because I am worried about diabetes, and they always say, “But you are so petite!” And I am, but I have seen diabetes in every shape and size and it is not only no fun, it is also deadly.

Looking Back; Two Year Anniversary

Wow. Wow. Wow. Two years in the beauty industry and I am just thrilled for the years to come.

When I entered beauty school in January of 2011, I knew that hair was my passion and my future, but my experience was still somewhat traumatic. I had been living on my own for some time. I had just graduated college a month earlier. I was planning my wedding and commuting by bus which was over an hour and a half each way (with about a half hour of walking in the snow). I didn’t particularly get along with most 18 year olds when I was 18, so I didn’t know what to do with myself as a 22 year old who looked 14. And it didn’t help that I was very serious. I have always been very serious with regards to my dreams. There were good people there but they were mostly stuck in webs of toxic drama.

While I was in school I entered my first competition. Looking back I am thankful I didn’t win, knowing what I know now about that company and how forced it felt for me to try to style entries for them. The important thing about that shoot was the contacts I made. It was an incredible start to my portfolio and that shoot got me a lot of work in the coming months. I also learned a lot about planning a shoot from Brian Herman, the photographer, and about scheduling with models, communicating my vision, etc. etc.

Richard always talks about how worried he was, that I would always be in the midst of drama in the industry and we are both thankful that I found a place at Salon Vivace where I get along so well with my coworkers. When I started two years ago, though, it was very difficult. Assisting was hard. I was told that I should be able to read my boss’s mind and that was just never going to happen. I learned a lot but our styles were so divergent, I didn’t know how to be myself without taking over and often overcompensated, coming across as too passive.

It took me a long time to get into the swing of assisting, and in some ways I never really did become a great assistant. I remember this sinking feeling I would get, this fear that I would never make it. I remember having similar feelings regarding ballet in late elementary school. I would go every week and just be miserable and wonder why in the world I was doing it, why I was working so hard, but once I earned my pointe shoes in middle school I fell back in love with ballet. A deep love that still makes me sad/nostalgic when I see live ballet. But with hair, towards the end of my time assisting my boss would regularly sit me down and ask me if I was sure if this was the career for me, and at the time I really wasn’t sure, but I had been wanting it since sophomore year of college and I knew there must be a reason even though I couldn’t remember.

Once I hit the floor and fell into a style of my own, everything felt like it was my own again. I found clients I adore, and even though I still have weeks where I am sitting and waiting for new appointments more than I would like, I thrive on my time spent with my clients. I love being there for them and being a part of their lives.

My travels to Budapest and Berlin also changed my career for the better. I found different inspiration and new styles and techniques. I found a beauty that was rough and rugged, and I felt for the first time like I might fit in somewhere
in the beauty industry.

Of course, winning the What’s Next Awards fast forwarded my career both in the experiences I have been fortunate enough to have and on the amount I have learned. I can’t believe how much I have learned in the past six months. I have presented at Intercoiffure, I have taught classes at salons and beauty schools, I have traveled all over the place and it is incredible!

It’s been a great two years and I can’t wait for more!

Photos from my first photo shoot!

My Most Memorable Haircuts I

Yesterday I asked my Facebook friends about their most memorable haircuts, either given or received, and I heard back a lot of beautiful, inspiring stories. Big hearts and so much passion. Because I tend to be long winded I thought I would jot down my own response here rather than on my own status.

I follow my gut, and a lot of times it leads me to strange places that I never would’ve imagined. A prime example is probably my most memorable haircut to date, because it was so odd and made me think a lot about hair in the populations that don’t make it to the salon regularly.

A Palestinian businessman came into the salon once at the end of my shift and I stayed to cut his hair. He had tight curls and a thick accent (I think he understood me quite well, but I had some difficulty understanding certain words from him) and just wanted his hair cut in some common American style. For men, especially curly hair, I can’t say there is one style that is suited for everyone, and while in the US a businessman with curly hair would probably cut his hair quite short, but I hate getting rid of the curl if it isn’t socially mandated.

We talked a lot about Palestine and where he currently was living, Qatar, and all the sorts of ethnic food we both like and the places we have both traveled to. He talked about how in the Middle East a man would never get his hair cut by a woman. He talked about his wife back home and what a wonderful mother she was and about his children… Which brought me to why he was in Pittsburgh. One of his sons was very ill, an illness I did not fully understand, but had multiple organs failing. They had flown 16 hours with a nurse and doctor to get to the Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. His wife was home with the rest of the children and pregnant with another.

At the end of his haircut he asked me if I could cut his son’s hair. He gave me the hospital phone number and I said I could see what I could do. Long story short, a few days later, shortly before he was due to fly back to a hospital in the Middle East, I went to the Children’s Hospital and the man game down to the lobby to check me into the floor his son was on. When I got in I was a little shocked to see the five year old with a bandage wrapped completely around his abdomen. He could not talk. The father said he had been quite a talker before the illness. But he was a beautiful child… there’s just something incredible about a kid with enormous brown eyes and thick, black lashes. Gorgeous skin and rich brown hair that brushed his shoulders in the back and obscured his eyes in the front. He was watching Cars dubbed over in Arabic and rocking back and forth during the entire haircut. I reached over the bars of his bed and his father held his head still so I could cut his hair.

Kid’s cuts can be difficult, especially if the kid is strong and busy bodied like this boy. The cut was not perfect but it didn’t need to be. The fact is, five inches off and a shape cut in and the difference was remarkable. He was a beautiful boy before but after the haircut he was beginning to look healthy again. To see him play without needing to swat hair out of his face and to look at those big brown eyes without a curtain of hair in the way… It was a very profound moment for me.

Balayage Highlights with Illumina, Plus a Beautiful Textured Cut

Earlier this week I was honored to be the first professional to color Nichole’s hair. I wanted to start her off with something that required minimal commitment and a definite, yet natural, change. I chose to go with balayage highlights using our Illumina color line.

Illumina is Wella’s new color line and it works beautifully on blondes. It has a violet base, giving a cool and unique tonality that also cuts some of the warmth. Even the warm tones have bite of cool, giving a complex tonality. Illumina imparts incredible shine and keeps hair as close as possible to its virgin state. It does not lift or cover grey as much as Koleston Perfect, Wella’s other permanent color line, but neither of those issues were relevant to Nichole. With her hair texture it would not be difficult for her hair to lift.

Her formula is: Illumina .2 8/81, .2 9/60, .4 10/36 = 40 vol

I painted on Nichole’s color with a medium small brush and did a balayage technique using Saran Wrap, based on the method from our class last month with The Doves,

Next we cut! She lost about five inches of length for a summery new look with lots of interior and exterior layering. Nichole has a great texture and density; even though she has fine hair she can handle a lot of layering without looking sparse. I did a variation of Sebastian’s Jagged Edge cut, throwing in more layering with a back cutting technique.

Styled with Volupt Soray, Trilliance and a little bit of Matte Putty.

Black Ops, Pittsburgh

Yesterday I went to Sebastian’s Black Ops event in Pittsburgh held at Capristo in Shadyside. Sebastian sent in Design Team member Will Bostock in from Philadelphia to teach a few cuts, a short cut from the Nightshade Masquerade collection and a medium length cut from the Urban Explorers collection. I was thrilled to see the short cut because, after seeing it on a Sebastian video earlier this year, it inspired me to start growing out my top and undercutting the bottom. I love the versatility, the movement, the texture… I can’t imagine having any other haircut at this point in my life. (Although I say that every time I really love a haircut.)

Will had a similar cutting philosophy to the Dove’s, so it was a nice follow up to my class two weeks ago. I really like the intuitive, organic approach to hair, although it is interesting to have someone else explain it because it really is about how you see hair and how you visualize it. Will has a very soothing disposition and it was refreshing just hearing his passion for hair. He talked a lot about staying present within one’s craft and about staying energized and attentive in between those energizing moments we all feel. Something about the way he talked seemed to resonate and connect with many moments in my past with all of the different art forms I’ve dabbled in. Almost spiritual, and reminiscent of the Pacific Northwest, though he is a Philadelphia native.

Sebastian is all about texture, shape and feel. At the class, they went over a lot of different texturizing techniques with a razor, scissors and texturizing shears, as well as an overall approach to cutting where texturizing and creating shape go hand in hand from the very beginning. Here is my cut from the class:

Since becoming a finalist in the What’s Next Awards, I have been sent numerous interviews and I keep getting different variations of: What do you want out of your career? That question has also come up a lot with friends and family. My husband finishes college at the end of the year and we are no longer tied to Pittsburgh. It isn’t that we want to move, but simply that our world opens up a little bit. So all these questions of my future have been bombarding me the last several months. And I kept wanting to say, “I will know by the end of April,” with a frightening certainty. This month has taught me a lot about myself and the beauty industry. A little bit of travel has helped me think realistically about the kinds of cities I will feel most alive in. And I am on track to having a pretty good idea what I want from my career by the end of the month.