I'm giving this 2 stars because I find the salon's prices very reasonable, and the cut itself might not have been so bad on someone who'd asked for it.
As it stands, I was really excited about going to this salon after reading reviews here. Tara just spent the entire appointment criticizing the products I use, and how I style my hair. When I told her I've used the ones she recommended, and my hair didn't agree with them, she told me it must've been that I didn't use them properly. She even went as far as to say my curly/kinky hair texture (which I've had my entire life) is really just damage, probably due to the fact that I relaxed my hair years ago; and despite having long grown out, she said, "I don't care what anyone says, those change your hair for the rest of your life." Ah, if only. Maybe I wouldn't be complaining about it now. I digress...
I made it clear I am growing my hair out after cutting a considerable amount off last year, and am just trying to get some shape during this awkward phase. She proceeded to cut up to 5 inches off of my shoulder length hair, in random, choppy layers. That's 10 months of growth. I must've been visibly upset, since she asked if I was okay, and the owner(?), and the front desk woman both commented as I was checking out.
You should leave a salon feeling better than you did going in, and I'm really disappointed that it ended up this way. I don't think I've ever been this upset about a haircut, even as a dramatic teenager. I don't know if there's anything that CAN be done to fix it until it grows. I feel I've wasted the entire year I've spent growing it out. It's horribly unflattering. It's this awful, mushroom-y mix of Carol Brady with a little badly-aged 45 year old soccer mom thrown in. It looks even worse when I try to do it at home. I wasn't going to post a review at all, until I was trying to style it after my shower tonight, and got so frustrated, and upset that my eyes started to water, and I gave up. Seriously? :-/
Oh, and her final words to me were "Your hair's not that bad." I guess that was her way of admitting all her criticism during the appointment might've been misguided, since my hair is healthy. Apology accepted.
Edited 11/26/11: I initially hesitated to name the stylist, because I see that another reviewer really liked her, but I wondered if I didn't, then maybe others will miss out on a good cut from one of the other stylists.
Edited 12/3/11:
I went crawling back to my old stylist almost an hour and a half away, begging her to fix this abomination. I'm removing the 2nd star. It was a HORRIBLE hair cut. I gave Tara the benefit of the doubt, but when my stylist went through my hair, she showed me the one random chunk that was INCHES shorter than anything else on my head, and the weird space of no layers between the shortest mushroom layer, and the longest mullet rat-tail layer. One side of my head was longer than the other side, and each layer had uneven longer pieces she missed. So, thank you, Tara. To get this fixed, my hair is back into an even shorter inverted bob than my original one I got 15 months ago when I cut 24" off my hair. Thank you for wasting over a year of growth, and taking me back to something even before square one. Absolutely terrible. I hope you spend what I paid you on classes. read more