TL;DR: Incredible. Go here.
Full story:
After my wedding, I cut off 14" of my hair to donate to the Canadian Cancer Society. I went to another salon I'd previously been to (but with a different stylist since the one I saw before was gone) and asked to end up with a collarbone-length bob. I think the stylist I saw wasn't very experienced, so she cut off the 14", evened it out, and called it a day. I ended up with one-length hair that had no style - and because my hair is naturally on the coarse side, it spread out at the bottom like a triangle/Dora the Explorer.
So I decided - I'm a grown woman, I make a decent living, and I'm about to start a new job - I'm going to find a super experienced master stylist. It's time to take my professional image more seriously. So I looked around on Yelp and decided to give N15 a try, since they obviously understand Asian hair (plus I like that they use great products from Japan - I love Japanese hair and skin products in general), and I made an appointment with Hiroki.
Hiroki's a man of few words, with a really cool, edgy personal style. And the salon is super chic and beautiful. I told him what I wanted and he told me what was realistic to achieve (based on the pictures I showed him), what would be the least damaging to my hair for what I wanted to do down the road, and what he thinks would work best. Fully confident in his abilities and experience at that point, I told him to do whatever he felt was right.
I didn't have much length to play around with, which already put me out of my comfort zone - I went from having almost hip-length hair in October to collarbone-length in December. Then as Hiroki started strategically cutting and adding in layers, I started to feel a little nervous - a lot of length was coming off! I hadn't had such short hair since I was maybe 12!
But when he was done and I took a proper look in the mirror - damn, if I didn't end up with the most beautiful haircut I've ever had. It was short but feminine, youthful, it had movement and texture at the back, it framed my face just right in the front and it just looked really beautiful.
That's what makes a master stylist a master, you guys!
The best part is, I told Hiroki that I'm hopeless at styling my own hair. All I do is wash and dry my hair - so the style has to be super low-maintenance. And it is. It doesn't look exactly the same as when I walked out of the salon because I don't dry it with a brush, but it looks great without any effort on my part. All my colleagues and family members piled on the compliments when they saw my hair for the first time afterwards, which has never happened before.
I'm blown away by Hiroki's talent, and I'm happy to report that I've found my spot! read more