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25 January 2016

Somewhere over the Visible Spectrum Part 1: My Journey to the Land of LA and the Onyx Pyramid

Happy 2016! Last year was a landmark year for my professional development and accomplishment. I became the Spring recipient of the Hairdressers at Heart scholarship, and will spend a week at Vidal Sassoon this March thanks to that program. This year began with the culmination of an amazing journey which began about this time last year with my first class at the Wella Studio LA. The whole experience felt as if I had stepped into the red shoes of Dorothy on her journey to OZ, and began simply enough, with a call to action.

Late in 2014, my co worker Alisha Basham put a message on London Salon’s employee Facebook page seeking a roommate for a class called Essential Color that was to take place in Los Angeles the first weekend of 2015. Something about this opportunity seemed intriguing, and I asked for the class and the journey as a Christmas present. It actually marked the first time in my 12 years in Eugene that I would fly out of our humble little 2 terminal regional airport to one of the largest centers of travel and commerce in the country – LAX.

The land of LA felt like a foreign place: cars moving at a frenetic pace on tangles of concrete highways, and as I would come to find out, Missing Persons weren’t kidding when they said “nobody walks in LA.” Even the Wella headquarters, which I began to think of as the Onyx Pyramid, cut an imposing figure. As you entered through its solid black base into a space featuring mostly white walls, clean lines, dramatic lighting and a large screen showing a loop of the Trend Vision competition my roommate Alisha had just won for North America the previous year. A short distance past the gatekeepers at the front desk revealed a learning space that was bright and inviting featuring two studios to the right and two classrooms to the left. We entered the second and larger of the two classrooms and found a place among about 16 hairdressers from all over the country.

I felt a bit like the scarecrow, confined to a narrow view of the industry for a bit too long, but aware that there was something more for me out there. When I came down from that safe and sturdy perch, my limbs felt so awkward and floppy, and a couple times there was a very real danger of losing my stuffing. There was also a bit of the cowardly lion in me, as my fiery red dreadlocked mane floated voluminously around me, outwardly conveying confidence, even though, in reality, it was a poor mask for my obvious nerves. There was no mistaking me for a tin man, however, since my heart threatened to beat right out of my chest.

I was immediately impressed with our instructors, Victoria Thurman Hall and Frank Andrade. They conveyed the information with respect to our professional experience, and with the assumption that we WERE already intelligent enough to grasp some of the fundamental chemistry and technology of the color. For me personally, these insights into HOW the color works, translated almost immediately into the WHY behind each of the necessary steps one does to create a fully saturated, long lasting, and healthy (as possible) coloring service. After that first weekend, the quality of the color I was creating increased at least 3 fold from just this one class, and my appetite was whetted for more.

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me posing with Frank and Victoria

I would return again to the land of LA in April to complete the rest of the prerequisites for Master Color Expert, including Essential Foiling, Creative color, and Color Correction. Each were challenging in their own ways (especially Color Correction) but merely set the stage for the odyssey that would follow over my next couple weeks in the Onyx Pyramid.

Master Color Expert, Phase 1, took place in mid November of last year, and the land of LA was a welcome escape from the chill beginning to set in up North. I knew this training was going to be a whole different kind of challenge, and my gut wondered if I was ready. My shaky scarecrow limbs wanted to betray my nerves, my large, now mostly orange mane wasn’t going to fool anyone, and inside my calm, cool exterior, my heart was beating as fast as ever. This time however, I had a genuinely good witch to guide me in my wonderful roommate, Kimberly Ricardo. She contacted me after the prerequisites in April to see if I would be interested in sharing housing and I thought it sounded like a great idea. I was so happy that I said yes, since she found us great Air BnB’s in West Hollywood, took me to some of the most interesting parts of the land of LA, and most importantly, offered to drive. She was also a huge mentor to me in those two weeks, offering so much insight and industry experience, and trying to constantly remind me that I’ve had the skill inside me this whole time to get through this challenge. Plus she helped me find some red shoes, but that’s a whole other story.

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Kim and I

And what a challenge it was! We began the first week learning not only about coloring hair, but about color itself. The curriculum at first felt comfortable to me, since it reminded me of my background in science. The hands on challenges, however, especially when it came to our live model, were where I felt the pressure, and my relative inexperience started to show. We left that first week with a huge binder full of information and a technique project as homework. This project took on the magnitude of a quest to kill the wicked witch, since it had to be completed sometime during, or immediately after the holiday season. The week we returned from phase 1 was Thanksgiving, and I would return to the land of LA less than 2 weeks into the new year, adding to the insane feeling of pressure that final week before my flight. Unfortunately I couldn’t just throw a bucket of water on this one, metaphorically or literally.

I did have a relatively easy time coming up with the inspiration for the project, in fact, it came to me as I was flying home from week one. My grandmother, known to us in Arabic as Tata, was a huge part of my childhood. Tata was truly my first glamour icon and rarely spent any time out of her red heels and lipstick. She was also the first person I ever saw dyeing her hair, because that was a sight that would burn in any child’s memory. She would wear this fully covering black velour robe that zipped up turtleneck style. On her head was what looked to us like a pile of mud, and wafted the smell of ammonia as she would pass by. Her signature color was, of course, a medium Auburn hue, just brown enough to remain socially acceptable, but red enough to clearly put her at the center of attention. My look was based around colors of red that to me, expressed her warmth and passion, and at the back, I placed a little piece I created as a nod to her signature fur coat, and the fact that she never fully styled the back of her hair.

I’ll be posting pictures of the finished project and fill you in about the Phase 2 of Master Color Expert in part 2.

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