I debated whether to write this review, but I think it's important to share honest experiences so…read moreothers know what to expect. I wish I had read something like this before booking with Elle. My review is solely to inform potential clients: Elle is not the person to see for a short bob haircut.
I chose Elle based on glowing 5-star reviews. While her portfolio was mostly long cuts and color, people raved about her skill, and since she's Asian and "gets Asian hair," I trusted her. I sent 4-5 inspiration photos, explained what I wanted--a slight A-line bob with the back shortened, texturized, and shaped--and she assured me she could do it.
After the first cut, I left the salon happy, but once home, I realized the veil covering the undercut she gave me had been thinned so much that there were now severe gaps, and the ends were left wispy and fragile (see photos 2-4). Within days, the cut only looked decent if I blow-dried (something I don't normally do), and my ends quickly became frayed and flipped out. When I raised my concerns, Elle brushed them off saying, "I gave you the look you asked for," but offered to "fix" it after a few days.
At the fix appointment, she pushed extensions as the solution to filling the gaps she created. I had never needed or wanted extensions, but she insisted they would solve the problem, so I agreed. By 6 PM--two hours in--she told me she was finished, but I was aghast to see what looked like the hairstyle I came in with now with a thick, straight mullet-like extension piece in the back. I told her I couldn't leave like that, so she said she would fix it.
What should have been a one-hour correction turned into a six-hour nightmare. She cut and cut and cut without making progress, insisting "this is exactly what you asked for" each time I expressed distress. I was flabbergasted. The only reason I was asking for the things I was asking for at this point was to continue to fix her mistakes. That was why I was there in that chair again in the first place. When I showed her my inspo photos again, she suddenly said, "Oh, you mean you want it rounded," which is exactly what I had asked for from the beginning per the A-line photo I showed her. I simply could not have been clearer about what I wanted.
She positioned me so I could only see the left side of my hair in my reflection, which was 2 inches past my jaw and chin at that point, and started working on "shaping" the right side. After 45 minutes, I felt so uneasy because she had been chopping away without comparing either side for so long. I asked to see the progress, so she spun my chair, and to my horror, I saw that she had butchered the right side of my bob into a jagged, upside-down U-shape up to my JAWline. It was completed jagged, uneven, and the back extensions were *still* longer than the sides. At this point, I completely lost it. I buried my face in my hands after seeing that the right side of my hair was 2 inches shorter than the left side, and broke down. I begged her to stop cutting and from this point on to *only* focus on matching the left side with this now completely shortened side.
Throughout the ordeal, she refused to cut my hair wet--even after I asked multiple times--until she realized how uneven the sides were hours into the process. By then, my hair had been chopped far shorter than I ever wanted. She finally wet my hair to match the left side to the ghastly right side. I was furious. And the even-ing out process took another 2 HOURS. I was exhausted, starving, in pain from sitting so long, and sick to my stomach as my hair got worse and worse. The whole experience felt surreal--gaslighting, dismissive claims that I just need to go with the flow and relax/stop overthinking, and excuses about how good it was looking as though my suffering was no big deal. Literally the whole time.
By the end, my full, thick bob had been destroyed into a modern bowl cut with painful, unnecessary extensions taped in. I initially told her I wanted a refund, then told her to forget about the request because she DID spend 9 total hours (WHY!!) cutting my hair into oblivion, and at that point, I just wanted to get the hell out of her salon. She refunded me $88 (minus the non-refundable $50), but no refund can undo the stress, time, and trauma of this experience. Getting $88 back for this experience feels downright insulting. I wish I could pay $1,000 to undo this whole experience.
If you want a short haircut, please learn from my mistake: look at my photos, read my story, and go to someone else. I left that salon at 10 PM, my bedtime, sky pitch black, everyone else gone home hours ago. I sat SIX hours in the chair, completely traumatized, in agony, with no end in sight. No client deserves this, and no stylist should be this stubborn, deluded, and careless while ruining someone's hair. I am forever traumatized.
