Prior to around 24 hours ago, I hadn’t had a haircut since October. While three months isn’t the longest stretch of time to go without a trimming of the hairs, my hair tends to grow in rather quickly & rather full so I was rocking a mess AF mop. I had an idea, while my hair was at length, to do something new with it. I’m always one who is up for a “hair adventure” & my brain came up with the bright idea that I should attempt a perm. My hair naturally is rather stick straight with only the slightest, tiniest, incremental bit of natural wave, that pops its little head out when salt is introduced into my follicle formula, but I was after a more permanent solution for my hair.
A bit of trivia that I learned while on this quest, but the term “perm” is actually short for “permanent hairstyle.” Maybe I’ve just been living under a rock & should have known that, but whether or not you were in the know regarding that information before, it’s out there on this site now for all of us to share in the common knowing of the thing.
I started by posting on my social to see if anyone I know or who knows me knew of anyone in the Nashville area who still offers perms, they’ve fallen a bit out of vogue, I feel, so I wasn’t sure. I was given a few names from friends & I reached out to each of them but ended up only finding dead ends. (Tried to refrain from making a hair joke there.) My next step was to reach out to local salons & see who could help me with my request. I reached out to a few local salons in the area that I’d either been to in the past or had people around me mention. They each told me that they didn’t do them until I got to Bea Rose Salon.
Bea is where I typically get my haircut on the reg from a guy named Joe Linkin. Joe is a veteran in the men’s haircut & styling space & always gives a trustworthy & thorough haircut. I didn’t reach out to Joe first simply because I knew HE didn’t perm & I wasn’t sure the studio he works out of now does either. I decided to reach out to the salon just to see.
When I got in contact with them they initially told me the same story I was hearing around town, that no one really does them any more, but they offered to check in with some of their stylists to see. Not more than thirty minutes later they were calling me back to tell me that while one of their stylists, Andi, hadn’t done one in a while, he was willing to give it a go & attempt the perm, however, he first wanted to meet with me to do a consultation. We set up the consultation for that same day & I came in to see what we could do with my hair!
Andi Sylvester & I met in the evening about two weeks ago now. He took me over to his station in the salon, sat me down, & began to examine the untamed mass atop my head. He & I came to the consensus that, while in order to perm the whole of my head I’d need to grow it out for a month or two, we would do the top & ditch the sides so that I had something manageable to deal with during Grammy’s week which was approaching. Additionally, he didn’t want to ‘poach’ me from Joe, so we met with Joe to go over the plan to cut my hair prior to the perming, as well as following up the perm with a trimming. We decided to block out three hours on the salon schedule to make the whole thing work. Initially this whole saga was planned for last week. The weather, the pile of snow that we got in Nashville, & the week worth of below freezing temperatures said otherwise, so we got bumped til yesterday.
I arrived at Bea Rose just short of noon. Andi, Joe, & I sat together at Joe’s station & further established the plan. I pulled a few pictures of permed styles that I liked & we decided to go almost the undercut route; longer on the top with very tight faded sides. Joe got to cutting & in under an hour I was partially styled, the rough was in place. With the roughage gone, it was Andi’s turn.
We first clarified my hair, stripping it of any chemicals, products, or oils that would stop the solution from taking to my hair. Next Andi got to rolling. It took him around an hour fifteen to an hour & a half to get the top of my hair in rollers. The method he used would take a strand, press it between to sheets of some sort of hair paper, then roll. He told me that the paper helps to insure that the ends of the hair also end up curled so there’s not some weird disconnect. With my hair all rolled up it then came time for the solution.
The way a perm works, at least from my understanding, is that it breaks down the bonds of the hair. After around twenty minutes of those bonds being eroded, you rinse the solution & add a neutralized that helps to resolidify them in their new position, which when your hair is rolled up, ends up being in the form of curls. Andi decided to pull my rollers prior to using the neutralizer just so the curls wouldn’t be quite so tight. It worked wonders!
I’m going to be honest, when I got back to the chair I was a little startled. It’s a rather weird feeling to go away from an area with one thing that you’ve had your entire life & come back forty minutes later with something completely different. Additionally the curls were a lot at the beginning, they also weren’t styled. It wasn’t processing in my brain that this was as tight as the curls were going to be & that over the next 48 hours into the weeks that followed, the curls would loosen up & settle somewhere between a curl & a wave.
I think that Joe caught the slight look of panic on my face & quickly ushered me over to his chair to trim it up. He explained to me as he was reshaping the new form of madness the different ways in which I could style it, additionally he talked me through ways to dry it that would allow the curls to loosen a bit & give more of the wave I was initially looking for. Styled & dried we met back up with Andi who took a few pictures & video of his masterful work & out the door I went.
It’s still a tad jarring. Every time I look in the mirror or touch my hair I have to be like “oh yeah, it’s curly now.” I would assume it’s a similar feeling to getting a new tattoo & forgetting about it until a mirror or your eyes remind you of it. The shock of it aside, I think I really like it & I’ve gotten a ton of very positive feedback thus far from those of you who have seen it! The team at Bea Rose Salon did an incredible job & we all got to go on a little bit of an adventure where we didn’t entirely know where we were going to land, which I think we all need a little more of in our lives.
Key take aways here. One; don't be afraid to change up your look. I know that can be intimidating but at the end of the day it’s just hair, it’s just make-up, it’s just clothes, they can all be changed. Two; the perm solutions smells a little like cat pee. It does, but with almost a fragrance aspect to it too. If you want to know what a similar smell would be seek out Mixed Emotions by Byredo. Three; be playful. At the end of the day a lot of the things that we obsess over or put a lot of stock into are just frivolities, have fun. Life doesn’t have to be serious all the time.
Here’s wishing you a phenomenal weekend &/or week!
As always, much love,
-C