"Well you realize..."

I love my hair-stylist. She's been doing my hair forever and I love that she knows what will and won't work with my hair. I love that she talked me out of, what I'm sure would have been, a horrific perming experience. I love it that random women come up to me at Starbucks (which totally happened this morning, good thing I had a fresh supply of business cards in my purse!) and ask me who does my hair.

I also love it when she starts sentences with "well you realize"... It usually occurs after I've shown her a picture of how I want my hair, cute layers all fanned into the face while I'm a habitual tucker (hair behind the ears). But anyhow, she had me in stitches (as we say in Texas) last night regaling horror stories of clients who just "had to have" their hair colored to match certain things...

Take for example the slew of women a few years back that "had to have" their hair the exact shade of Rene Russo's hair in The Thomas Crown Affair.

http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=pstills&id=1800381572

Now that shade of red is lovely... On Rene. But my stylist knows the woman who did Rene's hair for the movie and has the formula for that exact shade of red. Apparently, there are a few facts that one might miss if one were not a professional hair stylist...

1) That hair color is stop traffic red... In the Hollywood they can do things with lighting to make things seem softer or brighter than they are (who knew?).

2) It needs to be touched up every 3 or 4 days to maintain the ability to stop traffic... Say it with me ladies... Ouch! That gets expensive doesn't it?

and 3) Rene Russo is a natural red-head, has the coloring for red hair and didn't keep her hair that particular shade any longer than it took to shoot the movie (see the premiere photos for proof of her more sedated auburn hair color). Apparently there were a lot of pink cheeked or pale as death women wanting this hair color. That's a no ladies...

Then there was a story from the woman who requested that her hair be dyed to match her shoes. Now I've heard of dying your shoes to match a dress, but matching the hair to the shoes?? Interesting. I was slightly less horrified when I realized that the particular pair of shoes were really a lovely red-brown leather... But still. As a woman who's natural hair color can best be described as taupe... I just can't imagine!

And last but not least, the woman who wanted yellow hair. No, not blonde or platinum, yellow. Why do they even make yellow hair dye?!?! (a drop or two will "brighten" other colors is the answer apparently) And this for a woman with brown hair. So after a round of bleaching to strip all the brown color out of her hair, on goes the yellow, which unfortunately took really well, and out comes the finished product... Lemon Yellow Hair. My stylist described it as "painful to look at next to the skin". Yeah.