Member-only story
Don’t follow your mentor’s example. Do this instead.
You can’t learn these three by watching and listening. You have to act.
I’m not into fashion but I used to change my hair color more often than some people change their underwear. One year I was striving for a particular shade of ash blonde.
Then my regular colorist had a heart attack and died. He wasn’t very old and we were all shocked.
But the salon had its heart in the right place.
“Never fear,” they said. “We have his book of formulas.”
They looked in his little black book and found the formula. Another stylist put it on.
My hair turned a peculiar shade of dark brown. I could have auditioned for a part as Morticia in a vampire show. Even the salon people were speechless.
My next hair stylist — at another salon — explained.
“Colorists guard their formulas,” she said. “So he would write everything down but he might have left something out so nobody could copy it. For instance, he might have added a drop of gold to a formula.”
