The Long Game
First posted on the Hairdressers Anonymous Substack series by Victoria Waang
The typical attitude towards the hairdressing profession is one of frivolity. A means to some sort of “more dignified” end. While this perspective often stems from the gruelling physical demands of the job, most of the public seems to assume stylists should be young and carefree, and that anyone wanting a fruitful, respected career in the world of hair is underselling themselves. Throughout my career, and especially very recently, I have been questioning this idea…
Who taught us that a successful hairstylist is supposed to stop being a hairstylist?
I have a deep admiration for fashion and personal style. People have always commented on my outfits, and fashion has been my most consistent outlet for expression I’ve had throughout my life, so it’s no surprise I have always viewed hair as an extension of fashion. I got my start behind the chair at the Born to Style 2013 runway competition for the Aveda Institute in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and I’ve been “doing hair” ever since.
The experience was particularly revolutionary because I instinctively knew the lines between hair and fashion were always blurred. It gave me carte blanche to evolve and step into the world I felt an intrinsic calling towards. This wasn’t the moment I discovered hair; it was the moment I experienced my first creative awakening. It was the single most important moment of my life.
And then, along the way, people would tell me, “You should do something more.”
And I believed them.
Not because I didn’t love being behind the chair, but because I was the oldest of five growing up; now the oldest of nine. We consumed the welfare cheese before any of us knew what welfare was. I was always running away from the idea of struggling, and every question faced me with a reflection of the past.
I grew up with the terrific understanding that no one in my family was particularly invested in how my siblings and I were managing our futures. The only people around me with a post-secondary education were my mother’s brothers. I looked up to my Uncle Tedy and wanted to be like him. That was the closest roadmap to direction for my life. There was no plan for my education, so when I decided to go to college, it wasn’t because someone handed me a blueprint for success.
In so many ways, I was creating one for myself. I wanted to be the first girl in my immediate family to earn a college degree.
And I did.
I tucked my hair shears away and studied fashion design.
But the wild part is, the more I studied design, the more I comprehended what I was actually doing as a hairstylist. The thing behind the chair kept becoming more legible. Hair became its own form of communication.
I would drape a muslin sample in a studio lab and experiment with the dimensions of a sleeve when a flashback of cutting someone’s hair replayed in my mind. The thought festered until I suddenly realized the connection between the volume of a sleeve and the proportions of a silhouette weren’t so removed from the relationship between the front and back of someone’s haircut. They are the same.
So I picked up my hair tools again.
This time was different because my eye wasn’t solely based on intuitive taste; I felt as if my work now had a philosophy behind it and that I had discovered a new language to share and build from. This language could then be shared between me and the most important person, the wearer. My function became that of a guide to steward their unique form and be ever-present as they take complete ownership of their look and decipher this language for themselves. This epiphany led me to understand myself as a designer, which made me a better hairdresser.
This time I had a lot to prove to myself. My creative eye had changed, my prowess had changed. I took guests with a passionate zeal that could only be a means to make up for lost time. From dorm rooms, backyards, and even classrooms, I returned to the career that had chosen me many moons ago. One year ago, I opened my own studio in the heart of Orange, California.
More doesn’t have to mean a career change; more requires attention, experience, and resilience. These learned experiences don’t typically come from moving on. It’s the staying, the grit of honing technique under pressure, and ultimately, the experimentation and curiosity of progression.
And yet, I often find myself wondering… if I became a better hairdresser by becoming a better designer, why is it often thought that becoming a hairdresser is somehow the lesser ambition?
Maybe the question isn’t why someone would choose hair.
Maybe it’s why we ever assumed they should want to leave the profession in the first place.
Maybe the ambition isn’t to leave.