I went for a haircut this weekend, my second haircut with this woman, whom I found by accosting some other random woman on the street and asking who did her hair because she had a great pixie cut and I was desperate. (The accosted woman was bewildered by the whole situation, but gave me the info.)
Anyway, Sylvia, she’s Eastern European and very good and isn’t afraid to cut short hair. I mentioned this at the beginning of the appointment – that the really good short haircuts I’d gotten in Ireland had all been from Eastern European hairdressers.
“Oh,” she said almost dismissively, “that’s the training. Do you know how long they train in Ireland to cut hair? Six, seven months. Do you know how long we train to cut hair? THREE YEARS.”
So we spent almost the entire cut with her telling me about the training process for hairdressing wherever it is she’s from (I’m guessing Poland, because they’re the highest percentage of Eastern European immigrants to Ireland, but I haven’t asked her yet). Eastern Europe, anyway. She said you first spend WEEKS learning to wash hair properly.
Dismissively again: “I had a young man who came to do work study at the salon, he was training at the college to be a hairdresser. The first week, he could not even wash hair properly. I have to teach him. The second week he has clippers in his hand! I say, what are you doing with those clippers? He says, we’re on clippers now! I say, “Tsha!” and I let him do his thing. Whatever they are doing, he does it. At the end he says, maybe I can work here? And I say, no, when I look at you standing in front of me, I do not see a hairdresser. You cannot work at my salon.”
Back to descriptive, not dismissive, mode: “After WEEKS of learning to wash hair, you then spent WEEKS learning to blowdry. Straight dry, volume dry, curly dry, flat dry, short dry, long dry. Only when you can blow dry all hair do you begin to learn up-dos. No cutting. Only up-dos, it is styling but it is not cutting. Oh, too also we learn–I can’t remember the English word for it–” She takes a bit of my hair and winds it around her finger, saying, “The thing you do with ribbons and clips–”
“Pincurls,” I said.
“Pincurls! When you can do pincurls and up-dos–
“Then you begin to learn to cut?” I said.
“Tsha! You learn color theory. You learn chemistry. You are putting chemicals on peoples’ heads! You do not do this casually! A year, almost, you spend learning theory of color and learning chemical reactions and finally learning, practicing, to color hair. And THEN you may begin to cut!”
They apparently encourage trainee hairdressers to practice on their friends and families, because if you give your friend or your mom or your brother a bad haircut, you’re going to have to look at it all the time AND they’ll probably give out to you, so you want to learn to do it WELL. :D
And after three years, they have a two part test: one is theory, chemistry, etc, and only if you pass that are you allowed to do the practical. For the practical, you have to be able to do a pixie cut, a bob, and layers–“All other haircuts are modifications of these”–but also curly hair, mens’ hair, beards, and…possibly something else I’m forgetting. Possibly two other things.
So I was agog by the end of that, obviously, and I was like “Well no WONDER you’re confident about it!” and now I’m never getting a short haircut in Ireland from anybody but an Eastern European hairdresser :D (Actually, it almost makes me want to grow my hair out into a Louise Brooks bob again because I bet she’d do the bangs right.)
But we also bonded over having melted our hair with bleach and subsequently shaved our hands, and over the very funny fact that BOTH of us, when we did that, started wearing more makeup and earrings than we usually did!
So that was the most fun and educational haircut I’ve ever had, probably. :D