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My wife is a hair stylist. - chemistry for mixing color (actually pretty complicated and depends from person to person. If you’ve ever gotten your hair colored

My wife is a hair stylist. - chemistry for mixing color (actually pretty complicated and depends from person to person. If you’ve ever gotten your hair colored, they have a record of your exact formula + notes). - being able to look at random photos people bring in and reconstruct the cut on your head with your hair texture and curl characteristics. - actually making you look good. - learning how to use straight razor without slitting your throat. - learning how to do all of this within a set amount of time to fit in more clients per day. She made over $100k per year before we left the states. Her men’s cuts were like $40 or something, I’m not sure, I never paid for it, but it was more than $30. Either way, it is the best haircut I’ve ever had — she can spot “cheap” cuts a mile away (one of our first date talking points, actually). If you want to not look cheap from a distance, get a real haircut at a real barber or salon. It took her nearly 15 years to get to that level, but she could name her price by that point and people would pay.

chipsa 4y ago
Chemistry? yeah, that should have training. Straight Razor? probably should have training. The other three? that's mostly practice. So why 1500 hours of training, and not like, 160, and have the rest be on the job?
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Do you really need an answer? Go get your haircut for free at a school where people are training. ;) They’re pretty good for the price. You can only cut someone’s hair about once every six weeks, and you can’t undo a mistake. That person has to walk around with your mistake for weeks. — my wife
  - quesera 4y ago
    It's a reasonable argument, for a certain level of training at least. But as a counterpoint, it looks like getting a tattoo artist license in Rhode Island requires only a health test and a few hundred dollars.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    Why the downvotes? I guess I'll tell my wife to get her own account /s
    - syndacks 4y ago
      Because a lot of people on HN are unable to process sarcasm, social nuance, and many other forms of non mathematical type thinking.
- R0b0t1 4y ago
  Not that much training. You could teach people the basics and the why/why not in a lot less time.
zikduruqe 4y ago
>she can spot “cheap” cuts a mile away They all say that to establish confidence in their new client. Every time my wife goes to a new hairstylist, she comes home and says "she told me my last cut/color was horrible and I need to come back for more treatments".
- withinboredom 4y ago
  They might be, or they could be telling the truth. There’s no way to know for certain as long as it’s a zero-sum game. My understanding is that stylists have to actually cut your hair several times to understand which parts grow faster than others and cut it in a way such that when it grows out it still looks good. I’ve definitely heard my wife tell new clients their previous stylist is excellent and ask why they are sitting in her chair, while she is flipping the hair around to reverse engineer how it was cut so she can attempt to replicate the cut. According to my wife, “cheap” cuts don’t grow out well, the original shape isn’t held as it grows so it looks weird. If you aren’t just another body in a chair, iow, she knows how your hair grows, it will be cut so that it grows out and keeps it’s original shape.

chipsa 4y ago

Chemistry? yeah, that should have training. Straight Razor? probably should have training. The other three? that's mostly practice. So why 1500 hours of training, and not like, 160, and have the rest be on the job?

withinboredom 4y ago
Do you really need an answer? Go get your haircut for free at a school where people are training. ;) They’re pretty good for the price. You can only cut someone’s hair about once every six weeks, and you can’t undo a mistake. That person has to walk around with your mistake for weeks. — my wife
- quesera 4y ago
  It's a reasonable argument, for a certain level of training at least. But as a counterpoint, it looks like getting a tattoo artist license in Rhode Island requires only a health test and a few hundred dollars.
- withinboredom 4y ago
  Why the downvotes? I guess I'll tell my wife to get her own account /s
  - syndacks 4y ago
    Because a lot of people on HN are unable to process sarcasm, social nuance, and many other forms of non mathematical type thinking.
R0b0t1 4y ago
Not that much training. You could teach people the basics and the why/why not in a lot less time.

zikduruqe 4y ago

>she can spot “cheap” cuts a mile away They all say that to establish confidence in their new client. Every time my wife goes to a new hairstylist, she comes home and says "she told me my last cut/color was horrible and I need to come back for more treatments".

withinboredom 4y ago
They might be, or they could be telling the truth. There’s no way to know for certain as long as it’s a zero-sum game. My understanding is that stylists have to actually cut your hair several times to understand which parts grow faster than others and cut it in a way such that when it grows out it still looks good. I’ve definitely heard my wife tell new clients their previous stylist is excellent and ask why they are sitting in her chair, while she is flipping the hair around to reverse engineer how it was cut so she can attempt to replicate the cut. According to my wife, “cheap” cuts don’t grow out well, the original shape isn’t held as it grows so it looks weird. If you aren’t just another body in a chair, iow, she knows how your hair grows, it will be cut so that it grows out and keeps it’s original shape.