Accidental brunette

Yesterday I went to the Toni & Guy Académie in order to be a color model for one of their hair demonstrations. There was some kind of mix-up and I'd accidentally been sent to the wrong salon - the salon where they were doing all kinds of funky hair cuts in order to impress some of the top hair stylists in Europe. I'd been sitting there for about 30 min when I started to get a bad feeling. People kept walking through the room where we were waiting saying "So, who's ready for a major transformation?" with a wicked grin. I kept seeing all of these girls walk out with exactly the same hair color but really weird cuts - like a bowl cut with 2 or 3 long rat tails in the back. So I finally pulled aside one of the stylists and that was when I realized I'd been sent to the wrong salon. The two VIPs came to talk to me and really pushed me to stay. I kept protesting that I was trying to grow my hair out and that I didn't want short, spiky hair, but they were talking over me, all excited with the things they could do. I finally semi-yelled "No really, I think I should leave, this isn't what I came for" - which incited this big lecture about how people were so afraid to stray from commercial haircuts and that I should just be brave for once God damnit!

I'm brave about many things, but when it comes to hair cuts, not really. They can pretty much give me any color and I won't complain, but the length of my hair is something I'm pretty picky about. It was nice to cut so much off in May to change things up a bit, but I missed the length, plus it was a huge pain to keep it pulled back while working (I have to wear a hairnet when visiting my clients for biosecurity reasons). So I got up and left. The secretary felt bad about the mix-up though, so she rescheduled me for a color stage at their Bastille location this morning. Hairdressers from all over France had come to Toni & Guy for the week to learn the latest color & cut techniques from their top two hairdressers. I had an idea of what I wanted - dark underneath and blond on top, but besides that, I said they could do whatever they wanted as long as they kept the length.

Which is how I ended up going from this (taken this past weekend):to this:
and the glasses version...grrrr, wish I could get rid of those things:
The whole thing was sort of intimidating actually, as I was sitting in front of a room full of people with my glasses off, so I had no idea what they were doing to me. People would come up and take pictures every once in a while, or poke at my hair to see how it was progressing. I'm extremely happy with the results, though I would've liked to have kept a bit more of the blond on top (I'd been hoping to be more blond, not less). But oh well, how often do you get to have a top stylist working on your hair for free, right?

In case anyone else is interested, you just need to call the Toni & Guy Académie. My tip - book the morning session, because then you'll have your hair done by the stylists. The afternoon session models get their cuts/colors done by the stagiaires (though really, they're all professional coiffeurs as well, so it's not like they're newbies or anything). But the point is that they need to practice the techniques seen in the morning, so you may have less say in what gets done. And you do need to want to change a bit - if you're just going in for a trim or basic highlights, they probably won't take you.