Crazy question for you…..
What is the difference between cutting a mannequin head and cutting a real person hair?
Now, you might be thinking, Lee, you’ve gone mad, but bear with me. When you cut a mannequins heads, you can do any hair cut you want. And you can do any style you want, any way you want. That’s the difference.
It doesn’t matter to the mannequin what it looks like; you can be as creative, terrible, or as good as you want.
When you cut a person’s hair, you can cut as you would do on a mannequin, the most perfect, most beautiful hair cut in the world. And someone could turn around to you and go…..
I hate that.
Now, mannequin doesn’t ever tell you that. Because underneath a real person’s hair is thoughts, feelings, opinions, things they think to suit them, something they believe, do not suit them. Likes & dislikes.
So you could be the most incredible mannequin hairdresser that’s ever lived, doing beautiful haircuts that you could show the whole world. But if your consultation game is flawed when you cut a real person’s hair, if you don’t take the time to sit down with them and find out what they like and what they don’t like, you could end up with a beautiful haircut, that the client does not like.
And that’s the difference.
Now you might be thinking, Well, yeah, no brainer, because literally, the mannequin has no brain. But many salons treat their clients like mannequins, that they do what they want.
And as I said earlier, I love cutting the mannequins because I can experiment; I can do things the mannequins never complain about. And that’s a beautiful thing about cutting a mannequin. You can do that. But I always remember cutting a client’s hair that there’s a big line between suitability and likability.
So I can look at a face shape and go, this will suit you. But then I’ve got to discover if you will like it if you’ll be able to cope with it. All those things come from having a curiosity about the person sitting in your chair, not treating them like a mannequin, treating them as a person, and discovering what they like and don’t like.
It just seems so obvious. But the majority of haircuts that clients don’t like aren’t always bad technical haircuts. What the problem is, is they’ve got a great haircut on the wrong person.
So I cannot stress to you that don’t go to a salon and get treated like a mannequin, where somebody puts a haircut on your head, because they think that’s what’s going to work for you without taking the time to find out what works for you.
You’re not a mannequin. You’re a human being. You’ve got likes, you’ve got dislikes, you’ve got passions, you’ve got all this going on inside you and a good salon. A good hairdresser should find that out before they even get near you with a pair of scissors.
And if that isn’t happening, that should happen because that gives you the blueprint, in my opinion, to be able to deliver not only a great haircut, but one that you want and will love.
So, not so crazy. After all, what’s the difference between a mannequin and a real person’s haircut is the real person has thoughts and feelings.
So don’t get treated like a mannequin.
The next time you go into a salon, if you are being treated that way, pop over to Impressions, and we will treat you like a real person and endeavour to find out what works and what doesn’t work for you. Before we even do anything with a pair of scissors or a colouring brush.