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How to get the hairstyle you want

In a world where one stylist’s distressed baby doll cut is another’s choppy shag, it’s more important than ever to communicate exactly what you want. Alison Taylor shares her hair horrors and tells you how to get the haircut you want and not the haircut you may well have asked for…

Communication Rules

Along with our superior organisation skills and ability to multi-task, we females are brilliant communicators, right? Er, right – except, it seems when it comes to our hair. A couple of years ago I had a haircut that completely changed my look. It was a brilliantly straight, almost-in-your-eyes, 60s fringe creation – part Francois Hardy, part Jane Birkin. I went, with my hair-do and my best friend, on a road trip to California. It was going to be a trip-of-a-lifetime experience. About five days in, we reached Santa Barbara where I decided I’d get a quick trim. The hairdresser in question was a flamboyant character and I did my best to put things simply – ‘Just very, very straight, skimming my eyes.’ He gave me a confident nod and exclaimed - ‘Yes I totally get it.’

Sitting in the laidback Californian salon, connecting with the locals, I felt calm and cool – until he set about feathering my fringe with an Edward Scissorhands like fervour. Instinctively I knew it wasn’t right, but he was so confident! And despite my impending sense of doom, I reassured myself that by the time he’d done and blow-dried, it would be fine.

By the time I was staring at the final hair horror show in the mirror, I could only wimper, ‘But I just wanted it straight.’
‘It is straight,’ he boomed back, somewhat defensively. And actually it was – along the bottom layer.

‘Communication is everything when it comes to having your hair cut,’ says John Vial, Creative Director of Real Hair, the go-to salon for Laura Bailey, Elle MacPherson and a host of other chic west London honeys. ‘And it goes two ways. Your short will not be the same as my short, and your idea of a straight fringe – believe it or not – may not be the same as mine.’

Continued on next page.

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