I'm not hard to please. I've always been generally fine with the haircuts I've gotten for $65 from fancy stylists, for cheap from random ladies the Astor Place barber and for free from Bumble and Bumble and even from Arrojo's affiliated beauty school (even when they do take forever). It's just hair. If you fuck it up, I will fix it in my bathroom.
That said, I'm through with getting haircuts and color from apprentices at Arrojo. $25 may be a cheap cut in New York, but it's still enough that the person cutting it should give a damn what I want my hair to look like, especially when I'm paying up front. Both times Arrojo apprentices have cut my hair, I've gotten haircuts that were not remotely similar to what I requested and not remotely good. They looked like old lady haircuts. Given that I am 26 and already have hipstery hair, that's pretty hard to manage.
However, I will say that I had one great experience getting color done by a student in an advanced class. The student was not a salon apprentice, but was a teacher at the affiliated beauty school who happened to be training alongside the color apprentices.
The other times weren't so pretty.
Color experience #1:
I show up with short bleached hair which the (also bleached-blonde) color apprentice plans to turn a light auburn. She starts but halfway through, after accidentally turning my head mauve, discovers that (whoops) red doesn't take to bleached hair well. She decides her only option is to put permanent dark brown dye over the whole thing. It looks sort of like a sheitel, but at least it's not mauve.
Cut experience #1:
Since my short and very thick hair is grown out, poofy, wiggy and shaggy, I tell the apprentice that I'd like a girlish pixie cut that's longish around my face, requires little maintenance and is thinned out a LOT with not much volume -- Michelle Williams-style. After a lifetime of careful cutting, I end up with a round, puffy bowl cut. The cut has taken so long that neither the apprentice nor his teacher has time to fix it. I go to another salon a few days later to get it fixed.
Color experience #2:
SUCCESS. A petite young woman named Kristin who has long bleached blonde hair and a soft, southern-ish voice confidently and professionally turns my again-platinum hair back to my natural color via a double process. After the coloring it is remarkably healthy-feeling and almost identical to my natural color after a few washes. If you get the chance, get your color done by Kristin.
Cut experience #3:
I tell this apprentice basically the same thing I told my first one: Cut it to 2 inches or so around the edges, keep some length around my face, remove the volume, and leave some movement and messiness. He then describes the cut he wants to give me, and since it sounds nothing like what I've requested, I tell him I'm not sure that's what I want. He interrupts: "Don't worry, it's gonna look good."
He sits me down and, right after I remind him I want length around my face, snips the sideburn-area hair by my cheek to half an inch long. I tell him I wasn't expecting it to be that short; he replies, "don't worry, it's gonna look good." (This isn't the last time he says it.) He spends over an hour cutting all the hair around my entire head to that same length, while leaving a long floppy section on top -- sort of the white girl equivalent of a flat-top, or of that emo teenage boy bang.
Eventually his teacher comes over and advises: "Time to go to plan B."
At this point the apprentice sort of seems to give up, and for the next fifteen minutes the teacher rapidly slices out hunks from the flat-top with a razor until I almost have the haircut my mom had in 1992 (still better than what apprentice had given me). Apprentice then takes over and, with scissors, starts trimming the short parts again, insisting on finishing the details even after I ask him to stop. He says, "I'm sorry you don't like it," and when I tell him it is not remotely what I asked for and that I will fix it myself at home, he blames my instructions for the result. I try to explain how he can fix it for me, but he resists.
As I leave, I can sense some "yikes, poor girl got her hair fucked up" looks from other stylists. I head home and fix the top and front so that it resembles the haircut Jean Seberg had in Breathless, albeit way too short on the sides and in back. I wonder why on earth an actual salon apprentice could not do what I, an idiot with scissors, did in her bathroom and vow not to return to Arrojo. read more