I’m Lucie Fink! I’m a video producer at Refinery29, but every so often I like to try
other people’s jobs. Today I’m at FOURTEENJAY in Tribeca, New York, and I’m gonna see
if I have what it takes to be a hair colorist.
This is Lucie For Hire.
My name is David Adams and I’m a hair colorist. And I’m one of the owners of FOURTEENJAY
salon here in Tribeca. The job of a hair colorist specialist is to look at somebody’s haircuts,
to look at their skin tone, their eye color – and then the hair color is sort of the
painting on the canvas.
We have to have a really good solid understanding of how you see color and how I see color.
While I would’ve loved to dive right in and paint someone’s hair, I first needed
a crash course in color theory from master colorist, David Adams.
So Lucie, your first challenge today is going to be color theory. Color theory is really
understanding how color works. How we see color, how light affects color, and the most
important thing is knowing which colors to put together and which colors not to put together.
It’s like art school–
Exactly!
in elementary school but I’m about to put it on someone’s head–
Yes.
for a few months.
Exactly.
You could mix red and yellow, which will make what?
Green. Oh, that’s blue and yellow. I’m close.
Close, but far away. I’m gonna hand you off to Deanna now.
After I felt a bit more comfortable with color theory, I was ready to meet with my victim.
Uh– I – I mean, my client.
Emily.
Welcome to FOURTEENJAY.
Thank you.
Hi Emily!
Hi!
Lucie
Nice to meet you.
Okay, so I’m just pretending I don’t know Emily, but really she’s a
New York City private yoga instructor and a friend of mine.
We had a brief consultation to hear what Emily wanted.
I’m looking to transform. It’s been a really big year of transformation for me.
So now I’m thinking red. Something low maintenance would really be best. It would suit my lifestyle.
I’m a busy lady. And as my coaches taught me, at the salon,
everyone, even friends, must be treated like any paying customer.
This is beautiful.
Gorgeous, yeah.
I really love a lot of these.
The first step to realizing Emily’s hair
dreams– pre-lightening her hair. As I learned in my color theory crash course, it’s essential
to lighten the hair a few shades before coloring, to achieve the correct final tone. This is
a major technique. Okay, I’ve got it. I followed Deanna’s directions.
Crease it.
Slowly. Carefully.
Making sure to not make any mistakes. Only 50 thousand more to go! And after the pre-lightener
sat on Emily’s hair for a while, we washed it out.
So I just did my circular– I went around
Now, being a hair washer is an entirely different
skill-set that takes time to master as well.
I’m going to flip my hands like this and I’m going to get the highest point of the head.
Got it. Very soapy.
Yeah. Your second challenge today is going to be
formulation. So formulation is understanding the guest’s natural hair color and how it
will react to color. So we really have to understand which color we put back in the
hair versus which color we take out of the hair.
Deanna and I went into the back and began mixing colors.
So we’re gonna be melting three different shades.
Time to formulate. We had to balance just the right amount of the different materials
to achieve the exact tone Emily wanted. This is red?
Yeah.
Wow.
And this just activates all this.
Yeah.
This stage involved a ton of math, measuring and mixing. And it’s perhaps the most important
stage if you want to get the color right.
So this is gonna be a fun fall color– in
the middle of winter. Your third challenge today is going to be
application. So, It is really looking at the hair, and once we know exactly the result
we want, then we’ll select the right technique to use.
This is it. Thanks.
Yeah. It won’t look like this on your head. All gloved up.
Deanna showed me the exact right technique for applying the color diligently. I had some
issues being neat at first,
Make that a little more clean right there.
Keep it clean! Otherwise David said you’ll be cleaning
the floor. But eventually Deanna set me on course and
I was cruising. Do I look like I’ve been doing this for 30 years?
Yeah.
Cause I’ve only been alive for 25. I felt
I had gotten the technique down and about 30 minutes later, she was all done.
Your final challenge today is going to be
blow-dry and styling.
Now came the fun part.
Wow. We rinsed out
Emily’s hair. Nice and colorful. I even gave her a hand massage in the FOURTEENJAY
way and then we moved her back to the chair for a blow-dry. Emily played with the salon
dog. Meanwhile, I’m busy at work over here. I fully dried her entire head.
So you’re gonna have to go like this and just wrap it.
Oh, I see. And then close it.
And just don’t even close it. Oh don’t close it. Okay.
Nope, you just gotta leave it open. And then, there you go.
I see. And then went through with the curling iron and gave her some loose beach waves.
And just like that she was a new woman. 1, 2, 3!
Wow!
I was on my feet for almost six hours coloring
Emily’s hair.
I learned not only how many years of schooling it takes to get here, but also how much thought,
theory and hard work goes into each client. If Lucie really worked here as a hair colorist,
would you be happy coming back to her again? Oh, absolutely. Yes.
And I think if she wanted to come here and train as a hair colorist, we’d definitely
say, “Yes, Lucie, come!”
Alright! Okay, okay, okay! You don’t have
to ask me. I’ll take the job David. Excellent.
Thank you. Great. Thank you.
Thanks, Emily.
After today I have a complete newfound appreciation for hair colorists. This has to be one of
the most difficult jobs I have ever attempted in Lucie for Hire. And it had some of the
highest stakes. But I think we did a great job and Emily looked lovely.
Hey Youtube! Thanks for watching!
Comment below. Let us know what you thought of this hair transformation.
And as always click right here to watch another video, here to subscribe to us on Youtube,
and right here for my personal Youtube channel. See ya!