How can gray hair be young, hip, and sexy?

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I hear people talking about how women are forgoing haircolor to cover their gray in favor of letting their hair go au naturel.  I’ve seen some very unfortunate examples of this, brown hair with an inch or two of white roots.  Not a gentle transition.

The reasons for making such a decision range from cost, to time issues, to wanting to embrace their age.  Many more people hesitate for fear of looking older.  With the job market being so competitive right now, covering your gray could give you an edge when it comes to being hired.   For those who aren’t interested in job interviews, but just want to go down that road, it’s a hot button issue–given the double standard: Men are seen as distinguished; and women are thought of as unstylish or just plain old.  The Houston Chronicle quoted statistics of nearly 65 percent of the female population who use hair color (often starting at age 18) and 71 percent of women who color their hair do so in order to “look and feel more attractive.”  Can you really let your gray show and still look and feel young, hip, and even sexy?

As a haircolorist, my opinion is this: If you think you want to go gray, be sure you’re ready, and remember, you can cover it up again any time you want.  If you want to embrace your inner silver fox, ask your hairstylist to help with the transition. Having a plan in mind can make this project easier to go through.

This can be accomplished a few ways:

1. Wear a hat and grow hair out for 12 months, then cut your hair 6 inches long all over…(hair grows a half inch a month on the average) This one’s not very popular…

2. Have your colorist start highlighting your hair with your natural pigment color. This is the brown, black, red, or blonde that you might still have somewhere in there. I call this technique “gray reduction”. This will take up to 12 months for a hairstyle that is 6 inches long. Have it re-done every 3 months.

3. Have your haircolorist use a Deposit-Only haircolor product on your hair. I use only Aveda haircolor, which is a botanically-derived color line. It’s like a color-adding conditioning treatment, which we custom blend. It doesn’t have ammonia, won’t lighten the hair…only deposits color. The old school term for it was Demi-Permanent, or Semi-Permanent. It does a great job of blending the grey, and fades out over 4-6 weeks. Have it done every 6 weeks. You can keep using it until the old permanent color has grown out and gets cut off, then let the Deposit-Only color fade all the way out. By then you will have gotten used to how it looks.

Now that you are a bonafide silver fox, you can keep it shiny and silvery. Remember that white hair has air bubbles instead of pigment molecules, and it has a tendency to absorb pollutants that float around in the air, or come through in water, such as cigarette smoke, hard water minerals and chlorine. These can “yellow up” on white hair. Using Aveda’s Sun Care shampoo helps to remove chlorine or mineral deposits and having the hair treated with a violet-based Aveda Deposit-Only color treatment every 3 months will keep that beautiful hair turning heads for years to come. And THAT’S young, hip and sexy!

How long can you get away with long hair?

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There was a recent article in the New York Times by writer Dominique Browning, 55, about her long hair and how her family thinks she’s too old for it.  Typically, long hair has been prized mostly by the under-40 set, as evidenced by the many photos of younger celebrities with long, flowing locks.  For some reason, we tend to equate long hair with the freedom of youth, and at a certain point, we believe that we need to cut off our length to better fit into our older roles.  Shorter hair looks fabulous on many women, and certainly the maintenance and styling time changes with shorter styles, but if you’re yearning for long hair, don’t let peer pressure sway you.   Just look at gorgeous over-40 celebs like Sarah Jessica Parker, Jane Seymour, and Demi Moore.  Yes, they have stylists at their beck and call, but you can enjoy your own lovely length with some helpful tips.

Here is my professional point of view on how to have beautifully long locks:

1.     Get regular trims to keep the ends looking healthy and neat.  With longer hair, every 8 weeks should be sufficient.  Don’t sacrifice shape for length, either.  A softly sweeping bang or some face framing adds style.

2.     What’s the point of having long hair if it’s dry and lifeless?  Shine and bounce is critical.  Using the correct hair care at home for your specific hair type is really important.  A weekly deep treatment at home, and a monthly salon treatment will make a huge difference.  You wouldn’t toss your cashmere sweater in the washer with Tide, would you?  Pamper your flowing mane with only the best.

3.     If you color your hair to cover gray, don’t color it too dark.  Your skin tone changes as we age, and your college-age color may appear a bit “Morticia Addams” on you now.  A color a few shades lighter, with a bit more of a honey tone will perk up the complexion.  Consider a few lighter strands around the face too, to bring some illumination onto your features. (Think about how candlelight flatters you)  Have a clear gloss put on top of the hair color service.  Gray hair tends to be drier and frizzier for some people.  A gloss with help to create light reflection, giving you the beautiful shine that makes longer hair sparkle.  And Aveda’s Color Glosses are 99% naturally derived! (Other hair color lines are about 30% natural)

4.     Learn how to style your long hair, so you can resist the “default ponytail” or the dreaded “chip clip”.  Some salons offer a styling lesson appointment (Atelier does!) to go over the best styling products for your hair and the right brushes and technique.  Do you notice that stylists never use their hands alone to style your hair?  You’ll need the right combination of tools and products to duplicate the look at home.

5.     Yes, it takes time to grow your hair.  On the average, about ½” a month.  If you want long hair now, consider extensions to add volume and length while your own hair is growing.  Atelier is the exclusive salon in the South Bay offering the latest technology in extensions: Platinum Seamless.  They are undetectable, comfortable, made of real hair, and we can match your own hair perfectly.  Call for a complimentary consultation and color match.  408-244-4222.

With just a bit of know-how, from shoulder-length to mid-back, you can have hair that will certainly turn heads!

At your service, Karie Bennett

Business website vs. Facebook business page: which should you have?

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In the brave new world of technology, it’s easier than ever to get your business out in front of consumers.   Before the advent of internet and social media, business used mainly print or phone book ads, which were expensive, environmentally unfriendly and often wound up in the trash.

When’s the last time you picked up a hard copy of the Yellow Pages to look up where the nearest bakery or shoe store is?  It’s just not what the world is doing today.  It’s more likely that you “Googled” the bakery from your smart phone, mapped it on your GPS, or dialed it right from the phone.

Besides, the New York Times reports that the 616 million phone books published each year in the United States outnumber the country’s 304 million people by more than two-to-one?  Where are all those phone books?  With close to 518 million Facebook users, at a ratio of one phone book per person, more people would see your business on Facebook than in a paper phone book.

Very few people are NOT on the web these days, and with an average of 700,000 new users on Facebook every day, it’s clear that social media is the best way to get your business visible to new customers.

Here are some interesting statistics, excerpted from insidefacebook.com:

  • 30 million users update their statuses at least once each day
  • 8 million users become fans of Pages each day
  • 10 million videos are uploaded each month
  • 900 millionphotos are uploaded to the site each month
  • 1 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc.) are shared each week
  • 35 million active groups exist on the site
  • 2.5 millionnotes created each month
  • 30 million users access Facebook each month through a mobile device

Check out these data points, compiled recently by Miniwatts Marketing Group:

  • 6,845,609,960 people on the Earth
  • 1,966,514,816 Internet users
  • 517,760,460 Facebook users

Which means, approximately 7% of the people on Earth are on Facebook.

With no hosting fees, or page creation costs, many small businesses are turning to Facebook for their online presence.  Of course, the type of business you have will determine the kind of time you’ll need to spend updating it.

For a manufacturing business, where the constant updating and special customer offers aren’t necessary, just create the page, enter your basic info, and you can probably check in weekly to see if there are questions, or to field spam.  For salons, retail stores, bakeries, and other consumer goods businesses that need to stay in front of the public eye, daily updates are critical.  If you are a fan of twitter, create a smaller scale reminder of your business and your products or services.  Just be prepared to send out tweets a few times a day, or they won’t make the impact you need.

To stay in business for the long term, take a little time to create your business’ social network presence.

Do consumers prefer shopping convenience to an in-store experience?

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The recent announcement that Borders, the bookstore chain, has filed bankruptcy and is closing about 30% of its stores, including Santana Row, brings up an interesting question:  When faced with the choice between convenience or experience, which will consumers choose?

It’s being widely reported that part of Borders’ troubles are the result of a slow reaction to the importance of Web and electronic books, however, was the in-store experience amazing enough to win over the convenience-minded consumer?

Books are sold everywhere today.  In brick-and-mortar mega-stores, Costco, Wal-mart, Target, airports, newsstands, and even grocery stores, among others.  A huge part of book sales also comes from online merchants, like Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com (as an alternative to their large stores), Apple store, and electronically downloaded books for technology like Kindle, iPad, and Nook (also a Barnes and Noble product).

Barnes and Noble has a smart plan: offer a local store for customers who love to pick up a book, browse, and buy, sell books online and ship them to you, and offer electronic books that you can download to their Nook device, which they also sell.  www.barnesandnoble.com This effectively offers something for everyone, and is a great way of spreading themselves around, kind of the “something-for-everyone” strategy.

When is the experience of walking into a store preferred to looking up what you want and clicking a button to buy it?  It seems that a bookstore isn’t providing enough of a fun, interesting, or efficient experience to tip the scales.

From InsideBayArea:

“I will really miss it,” said Rhonda O’Neal, a 48-year-old Menlo Park resident and avid reader, who said she usually stops at Borders once a week after visiting a friend in Los Gatos.  News of the closing came as a surprise to O’Neal. But even though she has a Borders membership card that she uses at the store, O’Neal also said she occasionally shops online and recently began using an e-reader — two consumer trends that analysts say were partly responsible for Borders’ financial troubles.  O’Neal said she had resisted the idea of an electronic reader until she received an Amazon Kindle at Christmas. “I never thought I would like it, but I have to admit that I am using it more than I thought I would.”

The Borders store at Santana Row has been a great place to spend some time.  They have a cafe where you can sip a latte’ while reading a book, they offer children’s reading circles, and they have a huge magazine selection, ranging from the mainstream to the obscure.  However, on recent visits, more shoppers seem to be sitting reading the magazines in the aisles then having them rung out at the register.  In the upstairs cafe, books taken from the shelves are being perused during coffee breaks, but how many are then purchased downstairs?  And while kids’ reading circles are nice, one wonders how many parents bought the books to take home for bedtime reading?

The point being, if the experience doesn’t result in sales, how can a business with so much online competition survive?  What kind of a shopping experience do we need to have in order to get us in a store?  What are your suggestions?  Readers, please post your ideas and comments below.

Blending your social network with your business network

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FacedIn?  LinkedBook?  Our online networking is becoming so blended these days that it’s hard to know where one of your networks end and another begins.  Increasingly, your business contacts want to know more about you and how you spend your time away from work, and your friends are interested in what you’re doing at work.  Should you draw a line?  When is it okay to let both worlds collide?

For small business owners who work in their stores or offices on a daily basis, connecting with employees and customers is a natural transition.  When you spend a lot of time with people, you gradually develop a relationship, which can also lead into staying in touch online.  Pretty soon, a Facebook ‘friend request’ is exchanged, and now your personal Facebook page has a new viewer.  If they didn’t already know about your love of monster trucks and your collection of teacup Chihuahuas, they do now.  That last status update, the one at two o’clock in the morning, recounting your overconsumption of a certain beverage–how does that change their perception of you and your business?  Conversely, your star employee, who you are considering for promotion, and is now connected to you on Facebook, updates her status in the middle of the workday.  Now, how does that make you feel about her work ethic?  Sometimes a little knowledge truly can be a dangerous thing.

The flip side of this is LinkedIn, which is a professional networking site, connecting you to other individuals who are either in the same industry, are looking for a job in your industry, or just got out of your industry and want to stay in touch. There are no photo albums, and status updates consist of just a one-line description on what you’re working on now.  LinkedIn takes itself much more seriously, so you can be sure that it’s a serious way to connect with like-minded sort.  Think of it as an online resume, since you can list your entire employment history.

Privacy settings only take you so far.  If you’re willing and able to root around in the privacy sections of social network sites to change your personal information to become invisible, people may wonder about what you’re hiding.  It’s not a win-win situation.

The more important consideration is, what do you want your social network pages to say about you?  And to whom are you directing the information?  If you want to let the world know that you love to party, just remember, what goes on the web, stays on the web…forever.  That means, not only will future employers find it, your future kids will, too.  Yikes.

It’s more difficult to play fast and loose with LinkedIn.  There isn’t a lot of room to get into your personal life.  Which is just as well, as many prospective employers browse that site, and might not be amused by stories of your progress in Pole Dancing class.

This writer has questions.

Do you have answers?

EMPLOYERS:  How do you feel about being Facebook friends with your customers, or your employees?  When does it work best, and when doesn’t it work well?  Have you had any situations when you regretted mixing business with your personal online life?

EMPLOYEES: What do you think of being FB friends with your boss?  Do you find yourself censoring your postings, or blocking certain people from seeing your wall?  Why?

And, for everyone: What is the image your Facebook profile portrays of you, and is it accurate?

Post your comments below, and let’s see what we come up with.

The Facetime? Or just Facetime?

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I heard an interesting statement today, from a client in my haircutting chair.  (That’s usually where I learn the most interesting tidbits of information.)  She had read somewhere that hairdressers are the happiest people in the workforce today.  Well, I knew that to be true, since I was very happy to be cutting her hair, but I was interested in examining the statement more thoroughly.

I was enjoying my work, yes, crafting a precision graduated bob on her thick, straight hair–every five weeks for the past 24 years–I strive to make this haircut more perfect than the last one.  That part feeds my inner architect.  And talking to her about what was going on in her life, and answering her questions about what was new in mine, movies we’ve seen, restaurants we recommended, gives me that social aspect that I like, that friendly connection that makes my work different from, say, an assembly line worker, or a computer programmer, or a fast food server.  Plus, it makes me happy to make someone else happy and to have them feel good, which is what a great haircut or color can do.

It also occurs to me that in our current day and age of electronic communication, even with multiple methods of saying “hi”–emails, text, tweets, facebook “pokes” and status updates–there is no substitute for good old fashioned “facetime”.  Looking someone in the eye and hearing their voice is not only extremely satisfying to me, but my thumbs don’t get tired,  and neither do my eyes.  I think that you miss so much in these methods of communication; a wry smile, the gleam of a joke in someone’s eye, the crinkle of an eyebrow when someone cares, the beaming smile when someone loves the finished style, haircut or color.  You just can’t get that from a text or an email.

Yep.  That makes me one pretty happy hairdresser.

Is skin care a cosmetic?

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Sometimes an idea comes along that changes how you view things.  This is exactly what happened to me today.

I had an amazing facial yesterday at Atelier Salonspa, by Rebecca, an Aveda-trained esthetician.  It was relaxing, and it felt like a luxury–just taking some time out for myself felt like a guilty pleasure.  Little did I realize the importance of that luxury!

Today, being Sunday, I generally don’t bother with the makeup I would normally wear to work.  I just wash my face and use eye cream and moisturizer.  I was surprised to find that my skin looked rather amazing on its own.  Just the bare necessities, as it were.  As I looked at my skin in the mirror, I had an epiphany–skin care is the best cosmetic there is!  By the time dinnertime rolled around and I went out, all I needed was some mascara and lip gloss.  Running into an acquaintance at dinner who said, “Your skin looks fabulous!” sealed the deal.

Expanding on this revelation, I’ve come to realize that using the best skin care at home is absolutely important, but having the extra therapeutic benefit of a monthly facial is a critical component of beautiful skin.  The facial incorporates facial massage, deep extraction and exfoliation, customized masques, and steam application.  It’s just a whole lot more intensive than what I can do at home.

My take away here is that you can use all the makeup you want, but if your skin isn’t its best underneath, you’ll never get the look you want.

My first foray into the world of hair

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In 1980, while I was in Beauty College, I went to my first hair show.  It was in San Francisco, at a small theatre, and when the doors opened, it was like entering a magic kingdom.  Vendors stood behind tables covered with gleaming shears, rows of toothy combs, and stacks of bristly brushes that I had no idea how to use.  I felt like a person on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump onto a trampoline—I knew I would be excitedly bouncing, laughing, happy, and I couldn’t wait.

I consulted the program I was handed at the door: there were live demonstrations by experienced hairdressers who would be up on a stage.  This I had to see!  Who were these people?  How did they get to be so experienced?  I walked into a room filled with electric anticipation (much of it my own), and found a seat a few rows from the front.

A man was on the stage with a model and he introduced himself as Paul Mitchell.  Some people in the audience knew who he was, but most did not, and I was in that majority.  He was obviously an expert, and I was riveted to his every word, and my eyes were locked on his hands, which moved quickly and with confidence.

His model’s hair was wet, and he started to cut her hair shorter right in front of us. I was amazed that she would let him cut off so much hair! His hands moved so fast I couldn’t really tell what he was doing, but her hair started to take on a shape that looked better than what she started with.

Then he picked up a bottle and told us about a new product that looked like water when he poured some into his hand.  He said it was a sculpting lotion, and he worked it into her hair and combed it in, leaving rake marks from forehead to nape.  Then he blow-dried her hair, showing us how it added fullness and shine, and made the hair smooth.  Coming from Miami in the 70’s with nothing but Dippety-Do and pink hair tape to control my wayward texture and my nimbus of frizz, I was transfixed.  Whatever it did, I hoped it would work on me!

Then he said that this miracle lotion could be “re-activated” with a spritz of water, and touched up with a blow dryer and a brush for a fresh look.  This was nothing short of amazing.

That was my first exposure to styling products.  They were a revelation.  In the almost 30 years since, I have very rarely let my hair dry in its naked state.  Maybe after a swim—mainly because my hair doesn’t feel that great without some kind of styling product to add moisture and smooth down the texture.

That day at the 1980 West Coast Hair Show I had found out the great secret of the world—PRODUCT!!  I’ve had a love affair with hair products ever since.  Many companies have developed sculpting lotions, gels, potions, and sprays, that do miraculous things that add shine, hold, volume, and control, and I have to say I’ve tried many.

A few years later, I had the good fortune to work at one of the first Aveda salons in the Bay Area, and fell in love with the company, its mission, and its products.  Through 26 years of product changes, improvements, and new developments, and opportunities to try other lines, I had stayed true to my first love—Aveda.  Not only do I get magical results from every item, I get the satisfaction of helping people around the world through my purchases, and I know it’s a product that isn’t harmful to my body or the world around me.  The aromatherapy in every item in the line has a fantastic smell, and it makes me feel great.  And it makes my hair, as well as my client’s hair, happy!

The Happiness Hypothesis

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I’ve just read a great piece by Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hypothesis:

Most people approach their work in one of three ways: as a job, a career, or a calling.

•If you see your work as a job, you do it only for the money, you look at the clock frequently while dreaming about the weekend ahead, and you probably pursue hobbies, which satisfy your effectance needs more thoroughly than does your work.

•If you see your work as a career, you have larger goals of advancement, promotion, and prestige.

•If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling. You are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, “Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.  I wouldn’t mind the chance to find out.

When you are doing what you love, it doesn’t seem like work anyway.  That’s what I love about it!

Another tip for a successful salon visit

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Being early for your hair or spa appointment is always a good idea. Most hairstylists book 45 minutes to 1 hour for a haircut. That usually includes time to consult, have the guest change into a guest robe, give them a scalp massage, shampoo, condition, comb out, cut, and blowdry.
Starting up to 15 minutes late makes it more difficult for your hairstylist to do his or her best work. It’s best to arrive 10-15 minutes early so you can find parking, check in at the salon’s front desk, use the bathroom, finish up any phone calls, and settle in.
Then when the hairstylist is ready for you, he or she is more relaxed and ready to do a fabulous job.