Glamour Salon & Spa

Bleaching your hair gray isn’t just eye-catching—it’s also a middle finger to the anti-aging industry. Barbara and Barbara owner Kara Wabbell shows us how it’s done. To some people, bleaching your hair gray in your 20s must seem as sensible as yanking out all your teeth and buying dentures for fun. After all, isn’t the entire beauty-industrial complex geared toward reversing, or at least slowing down, the aging process—not skipping ahead 30 years? But of course that defiance of expectations is part of the appeal of the trend, which has seen granny-gray tresses pop up on everyone from Gareth Pugh and Giles Deacon models to teenage style blogger Tavi Gevinson. "As men age and their hair begins to silver, they are typically perceived as sophisticated, wise, and successful,” says Sarah Brewster, a 28-year-old clinical research coordinator living in Humboldt Park, who sports a Miley Cyrus–esque undercut with shaved sides and a tuft of 7-inch long, gray-colored hair on top. “But the beauty standard for women is to dye over their graying hair in order to obtain a youthful look…The gray-hair trend, for me, is a rebellion against this gender norm.” Sarah finds it’s hard for many people to process the look. "I get mistaken for an old woman all the time! Especially if someone sees me from behind, " she says. But that doesn't stop her from wearing her cut with pride. Aside from the social statement it makes, Sarah insists she finds it “aesthetically appealing. It's unique, it’s exciting, and it looks awesome.” But if the contrarian appeal of gray hair is understandable, the process of creating it was still a mystery to me. For help, I turned to Sarah’s stylist, Kara Wabbell, the owner of Logan Square’s Barbara and Barbara. Reach for the Bleach Trying to dye your hair gray is a mistake, since the hair will lose its color over time due to stress, pollution, and other factors. That’s why stylists don’t dye, but rather bleach hair to obtain a gray color. How dark your virgin color is—Sarah’s roots are about a Level 4—determines how long your hair must process under the bleach. "It takes a lot of patience," says Kara, whose clients have requested the bleached-gray look for as long as she’s been a hairdresser (about 10 years). In fact, she says most appointments take up to four hours. During that time, Kara concocts a specialized formula of bleach, toners, and developers for each client and relies on her intuition (and years of practice) to estimate how long the ends and the roots should be bleached. After the Appointment Though the lengthy process does require quite a bit of art and science, maintaining the gray hue in-between visits isn’t as tough. “I use purple shampoo,” Sarah says. Kara adds, “Like the kind little old white-haired ladies use.” Purple shampoo. Seriously? Kara explains: "You are essentially turning your hair to cheesecloth. It [becomes] so porous it soaks up anything, like hair oil, street pollution, and dirt. So you have to use the purple shampoo…to keep your hair that bright, moonlight white color." So, what happens when someone doesn’t want gray hair anymore? You just dye over it, right? “You shave it off,” Kara says matter-of-factly. Dyeing over a large area of bleached-gray hair can be a recipe for disaster because the follicles no longer hold pigment. That’s why some bright-blonde girls end up with a purple tint after box-dyeing their hair brown. Still, not everyone has to shave their head to start over. Kara says some hair can be salvaged. It just has to happen in steps, and it needs to be done by a professional stylist. The Real Reason to Do It Anyone who sports a hairdo that makes them look older, takes up to four hours to create, and requires special shampoo to maintain is clearly going to a lot of trouble to make a statement. But the message may not be as simple as you think. For all the talk of defying social mores, Sarah says she has more personal reasons for choosing the look. “I don't have grandiose ideas that my gray hair is changing the way society views aging and beauty in our culture,” Sarah says. “Yet my gray hair did help me change the way that I view my aging and my beauty. To be able to walk down the street with a buzzed-gray cut and to feel confident and sexy, well, that's just plain empowering." Photos: Stephanie Anderson, Groupon

Braids don’t have to be complicated. At the Fall 2013 shows, Valentino’s models wore long side-braids that were sleek and simple. Meanwhile, Badgley Mischka's upside-down french braids were just as neatly woven, if more avant-garde. The symmetrical loops and twists of these braids might seem intricate, but they aren’t too hard to replicate. Hairstylist Lauren Sweenor demonstrates how to lace up two braided looks of her own—one natural and one dramatic—that play off the Fall 2013 trend. FOR A NATURAL LOOK “One of the biggest mistakes people make when they do an accent braid is not starting with enough hair…[because] when you braid that hair, it becomes a lot smaller,” Lauren says. To ensure that our model Jess’s accent braid has impact, Lauren begins by separating a 5- to 6-inch piece of hair from behind her left ear. She braids the hair using a fishtail technique—splitting the hair into two sections, and passing a small strand from one side over its section, then under the opposite section. Lauren repeats this process until she has about an inch of unbraided hair left. She recommends gently pulling on the loops of the braid when it’s complete, which lends it a purposely unfinished appearance. Wait to do so until after you’ve put in a hair tie, though! “Otherwise you will pull all the hair out.” A mist of hairspray holds the look in place. FOR A DRAMATIC LOOK Lauren delights in styling fauxhawk braids because they’re eye-catching and edgy, yet easy to do. This particular fauxhawk results from a dutch braiding technique, which is the reverse of a french braid—the strands are braided outward rather than inward. Once the hair is braided, Lauren creates the bottom of the fauxhawk by rolling the end of the braid inward and up. She secures it with bobby pins at the nape of the neck. To give the look a modern, severe appearance, Lauren loosens the braid’s loops with a tail comb, and tightens the non-braided hair on the sides of the head with bobby pins. Her secret weapon throughout this entire session: firm-hold hairspray. To complement this trend with another, see a past tutorial on emerald eye shadows. Photo: © Stephanie Bassos, Groupon

I don’t climb ladders very gracefully, as Valter Desfassiaux knows—he’s seen it firsthand. Valter is a stylist and makeup artist at Barbara and Barbara, a roughly two-year-old salon in Logan Square. We chatted in the salon’s back room, on what looks like an indoor balcony. Accessible only by ladder, it’s where the previous owner kept his loft bed.   The quirky, lived-in vibe of the back room permeates the rest of the salon. A sign on the wall reads “God Bless Our Trailer,” and while clients wait, they can lounge on a sofa sipping free PBR. “We wanted it to feel like you were just hanging out in someone’s apartment,” Valter says.   Of course, most apartments don’t have a massive mural of a purple-haired forest in their living room. Created by local artist Cheri Charlton, the salon’s mural depicts a muscular hand descending from the sky and shearing the trees’ foliage, whose snipped ends shower a community of centaurs, mermaids, and giraffes. In real life, the only thing that descends from the sky at Barbara and Barbara are the blow dryers, which plug into the ceiling; but the epic painting does feel appropriate in the space, where the cuts and color jobs are at once edgy and laid-back.   But even the most laid-back styles need upkeep. Here, Valter shares five simple haircare tips he often gives his clients, a demographic he describes as “chill,” and “very ‘I just let it air dry.’”   1. CONDITION A LOT   “People don’t use [conditioner] as much as they should,” Valter says. And when they do use it, they often apply it incorrectly. He recommends smoothing it on from mid-strand to ends, leaving the scalp to its own devices; it produces all the oil it needs.   As far as choosing a product, Valter loves the eco-friendly conditioners at Lush. They smell like candy, and are made from all-vegetarian ingredients—mostly organic produce and essential oils.   2. SHAMPOO A LITTLE   Shampooing too much can prompt your scalp to overproduce oil. Valter recommends every other day at most, but he personally shampoos once a week. Here too, application is important. “A lot of people shampoo everything, but you don’t really have to. You can just do the scalp, and let it rinse through.”   3. ACCEPT FRIZZ, WITHIN REASON   “Frizz is going to happen,” Valter says. “The question is how [to] control it.” A good cut is key, as is never drying your hair with a towel—instead, he recommends an old T-shirt or a rag. (Paper towels also work, but “it’s not really earth friendly.”) For anti-frizz products, he recommends Moroccanoil, since the formula works on both wet and dry hair.   4. GET REGULAR TRIMS WHILE GROWING YOUR HAIR OUT   It’s counterintuitive, but Valter recommends a trim every four to six weeks while you grow your hair out. Contrary to the myth, cuts don’t make hair grow faster, but they do combat split ends. “If you don’t get rid of them, they just keep splitting,” Valter says. And by progressively chewing up your ends, they slow the net growth of healthy new hair.   5. JUMP ON THE WORLD’S OLDEST BANDWAGON   Clients often ask Valter what’s “in,” but to him, the most stylish hair is healthy hair. “That’s all that matters. Because at the end of the day, that looks better than fried hair [with cool] highlights.”