I got my hair dyed a crazy color professionally and will never DIY again
Every summer, I go through this existential crisis where I think I have to go to the very extremes in order to prove that I am LIVING, and this usually results in me either chopping off eight inches of hair or dying it some crazy color. This summer, I decided on the latter.
But instead of getting store-bought powder bleach and raiding Hot Topic for the perfect color of Manic Panic hair dye, I got my hair colored professionally at Pierre Michel Salon by their colorist Yoshico Alexis. If you take a peak at her Instagram, @yoshico_alexis, you’ll see all the colors of the rainbow painted on hair.
Let me just say that I’m used to dying my hair in my bathroom with an old towel around my shoulders so that I don’t stain my skin. 16-year-old me was all about the DIYs. But 19-year-old me? Oh, she is living. When I walked into the salon, I was given a robe to change into, and the t-shirt that I was wearing was put on a hanger so that it wouldn’t crease. I was offered beverages served in wine glasses and chocolate just because I said I was hungry. I have never felt more like a bougie bitch in my entire life.
Yoshico greeted me at her station and started off with bleaching my hair to lift it to a blonde that could be a canvas for any color of the rainbow. She did mention that Asian hair is the hardest to lift because it is so dark and usually thick, so she had the patience to sit with me while the bleach did its thing.
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Yoshico has been doing hair for around 16 years now, so you could say she’s a pro. Her own hair has been through its ups and downs, with going red and chopping it like a boy being her lowest of the lows.
“A guy I was dating said I looked like his little brother, so naturally, the hair had to go,” she told me. “And so did he.”
But even through the lows, Yoshico’s fascination with hair being able to transform a person keeps her committed to the game.
Although she’s able to do hair like a true prodigy, she says to always leave your hair jobs to another professional. To get better angles and precision, one should n e v e r grab a pair of scissors and start chopping. And to anyone who still believes that DIY hairdos are acceptable, Yoshico recommends going to a professional because “they know when to stop, how much your hair can take, and what will make you look your best.”
“If you get sick or injured, wouldn’t you want to go to a doctor or hospital instead of looking it up on Google and putting a Band-Aid on it?,” Yoshico says.
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After my hair lifted to a light enough blonde, Yoshico went to work. We started off with washing my hair and deep conditioning it so that my hair wouldn’t be completely dead after the bleach job, and then I was presented with the holy grail of hair dye: Yoshico’s color chart.
I could choose from highlighter yellow to lavender to turquoise and every color in between. I decided on a mix of a few greens and blues and let Yoshico decide what would look the best. Fast forward to twenty minutes later, the mixing bowls of dye were blue and green, and I was on my way to looking like Kylie Jenner when she went through her blue hair phase.
The process of coloring my hair took around half an hour, and Yoshico made sure to massage each strand to ensure the evenness of the dye. And even though it seems like just about anyone can do this, Yoshico says, “It’s not even about the money. Going to a salon to dye your hair will save your hair from unnecessary damage and be better for you in the long run.”
Time went by quickly because I started engaging in all the gossip and salon talk that you see in movies, and before I knew it, I was a blue headed baddie! We decided on keeping the top of my head natural so that it would come out looking like a balayage, and I was instantly feeling myself. Yoshico wine-and-dined my hair by putting more conditioner in it to keep it shiny and healthy, and she finished by blowdrying it into soft-curled-perfection.
After this experience and knowing that places like this exist, I definitely knew I could never go back to dying my own hair. Once you go professional, your hair never goes unexceptional.
