Infamous Tea & Honey show
For people who have pitch-dark hair, it’s absolutely dramatic and fascinating to bleach out the color completely and go blonde. But at the same time, it’s a completely horrifying idea and mysterious process for anyone who’s never done it. It’s hard to imagine what your hair will look like in blonde and if and how much damage will be done to your hair. We feel the same, so we tried it and would like to show you how it works.
Firstly, I chose a hair salon, Franck Provost. I was very nervous about dying my hair, especially about bleaching so much, as I’ve never dyed my hair ever before, so I really want to go somewhere professional and reliable. I want the margin for error to be minimal. There are actually a lot of different shades of blonde, so I did some research and found some pictures of the exact blonde that I’d like to go for.
During the first appointment, I met with Cyril Fenasse, the Color Technician, at Franck Provost’s Shanxi Nan Lu salon. I explained my expectations to him and he told me that it’s possible to achieve and that blonde hair will go well with my funky style. But as I’ve never dyed my hair before, he insisted that I do an allergy test first, which entailed putting some dye on a Band-Aid and sticking it on my skin and left it there for 48 hours to see if my skin would be allergic. Franck Provost was the only salon that I’ve been to that put safety before profits, as the other one will not let an eager client leave without a hair-do.
2 days later, I went back to the salon, happily not allergic. This time I also met with Tania Ocloo, the Artistic Stylist. Jointly, they will make my hair fantasy come true. The first step is to cut my hair shorter, as the longer it is, the harder and more time consuming it is to beach and dye. Tania did a great job cutting my hair within 1 hour, giving me exactly the shape and the density that I wanted. She explained to me that the key to a good haircut is to understand the quality of the hair, the direction of how the hair grows, and making it easy for the client to style it by themselves. Then Cyril took over and started to work on bleaching my hair from Level 1 (pitch-black) to Level 14 (platinum blonde). Within the 3 hours of 3 times of bleaching, the oxidant made my hair color faint from black to strawberry to kind of yellow gold finally. Because the color change was so dramatic, Cyril had to use the heater to fasten the process, and he said it’s normal to leave some red spots on my scalp. To protect my hair from too much damage, Cyril decided that 3 times of bleaching was the maximum for one day, and I had to come back after at least 2 days to bleach more to achieve the light yellow color. He applied toner to add more color to my hair and make the color more even. Then Tania trimmed my hair a little bit and blew-dry it and styled it in different ways to show me how I can play with it.
1 week later, I was back and ready for the final stage of my hair-transformation. This time I spent 2 hours bleaching my hair again with Cyril first. After the process, my hair color is much lighter and even. It’s almost white, and very similar to the effect that I was hoping to achieve. Then we did the toner, which gave my hair more blondeness. Afterwards, Cyril gave me a hair mask treatment which was supposed to heal the damages done by bleaching and give my hair a natural shine. The final step is styling. Tania and I agreed that the haircut from last time is too long and a little dull so she decided to cut it a lot shorter and make it look younger and more hip. And voila, after in total 10 hours, it’s done, as you can see.
Finally, they told me that blonde hair is very high maintenance. I have to use special shampoo designed for colored hair, and hair masks and leave-ins to after washing my hair and they recommended me to use products from Kerastase, the most professional French hair product brand. I have to say that I loved my new look, but the texture of my hair did become very dry. After using the Kerastase products, I felt that they really work to make my hair to become smoother with a healthy shine.
