A hairdresser with twenty years of experience, a full salon, and their hand hesitating above your head. You may have already seen this scene. It says nothing of ill will or contempt, but something else.
The consequence is known to all who experience it: calls that go unanswered, an address on the other side of town, years without visiting a salon. What is less known is exactly what it would take to make it stop, and how little it is. We know this because we have been training hairdressers for years, and because the method we teach consists of six steps. They are detailed in our step-by-step tutorial, which introduces the Rituel Texture®.
During my hairdressing diploma, I asked a teacher why we weren't taught how to style coily hair. She told me that Black women styled their hair among themselves, that they managed. I told her that they might want a moment of well-being, like all women in France. In hindsight, I know she simply lacked information. Later, established hairdressers came to see me to say: I don't even know how to shampoo this hair, can you show me? What I have encountered in the field are above all professionals who are at their wits' end.
Ghana Elin, founder"I don't know how" is not a refusal
When you hear "no" on the phone for the fourth time, you draw the most obvious, and most hurtful, conclusion: that they don't want you. It is an interpretation we understand, and no one can guarantee it is always wrong. But in the field, what we encounter first are professionals who have never touched this hair and do not know where to begin. Shampooing, cutting, drying: everything they have learned produces a result contrary to what they expect.
Under these conditions, refusing is often the most honest decision. An impromptu appointment on coily hair does not result in an average hairstyle, it results in breakage, an unbalanced cut once the hair is dry, and a client who will not set foot in a salon again for several years. Between damaging and guiding, guiding is better.
What is unacceptable, however, is that the situation lasts. A lack of training is a starting point, not a position to hold for twenty years. And a refusal accompanied by a comment about the difficulty or coarseness of the client's hair is no longer an admission of incompetence, it is something else.
Where the gap comes from
You have to go read the text that organizes the profession. The CAP Métiers de la coiffure curriculum, the decree that sets out what a student must know how to do to graduate, describes the skills in entirely generic terms: "develop a diagnosis", "perform a shampoo", "perform cutting techniques". No texture is distinguished from another. The program does not say that you must ignore coily hair, it says nothing at all, which produces exactly the same result: a student can graduate without ever detangling, washing, or cutting coily hair.
The rest follows mechanically. For lack of a program, everyone improvises: a video, a model, a colleague who is used to it. The gestures are passed on by approximation, and the approximations are passed on with them. This is how false instructions have been circulating for so long that they pass for common sense, starting with the one that forbids detangling dry hair.
It must be said bluntly: it is not the hairdressers' fault. It is the result of an initial training that, by not naming any texture, left everyone to fend for themselves. The people involved, meanwhile, were often the first to be bothered by what they did not know how to do.
What to unlearn first
The difficulty of a training on coily textures is not to add knowledge. It is to undo acquired reflexes, because they are almost always the exact opposite of what needs to be done. The stake is not cosmetic: coily fiber grows a little slower than others and breaks much more easily when handled, which has been measured by dermatology (Loussouarn, British Journal of Dermatology, 2001). An unsuitable gesture does not produce an average result, it breaks.
The four reflexes that block a salon
- Cutting on wet hair. On coily hair, the cut is done dry, on stretched hair after drying, the only state where shrinkage is visible.
- Taking the client directly to the sink. No trip to the sink without prior detangling, with fingers and on dry hair.
- Emulsifying shampoo as on straight hair. Washing is done by section and by zone, on the scalp.
- Taking out the diffuser by default. It is only suitable for rare cases on coily hair, and it has replaced for years the drying that was suitable.
Once these four reflexes are set aside, the rest is learned quickly. It is the most frequent feedback from trained hairdressers: they expected a continent, they find a method. At the Paris Opera, what struck our team the most was the level of expertise and meticulousness already in place. Once they understood how to prepare the material, these professionals were able to apply the gestures immediately.
What the training really changes
It gives an order. The Rituel Texture® consists of six steps, from detangling with the African comb to the final styling, and this order is not decorative: each step prepares the next. Detangling with fingers on dry hair circulates sebum and unties knots before they tighten with water. Double cleansing, gentle clarifying then The Repair Shampoo, removes from the fiber what would prevent the treatment from working. The Repair Mask coats the lengths, and it is only once coated that they accept the Man Dol' Comb without breakage.
It then gives honest durations. A complete Rituel Texture® in the salon takes two hours and fifteen minutes to three hours and fifteen minutes depending on the styling and the presence of a cut. This figure seems discouraging as long as you compare it to a blowout; it becomes manageable as soon as you treat it as what it is, a full-fledged service, with its price and its time slot. Our guide to service durations provides the benchmarks.
It finally gives a vocabulary. Being able to name what you see, explain why you leave it on for ten minutes and not forty, say what you do not recommend: that is what transforms an endured appointment into an understood appointment. Many hairdressers discover in training that they already knew how to do it, but they did not know how to say it.
What it changes in the chair
On the client's side, the difference is not measured by the final result, but by what does not happen. No one asks her to arrive detangled. No one comments on the coarseness of her hair. No one offers her a straightening as an answer to dryness. She is not made to wait while they look for who, in the team, will be willing to take care of it.
She leaves with hair that moves from the root, a light scalp, and above all with instructions that can be applied at home. It is the second effect of a trained salon: it makes its client more autonomous instead of making her dependent on an appointment. Our six-step method is made to be repeated at home.
And if you are looking today for a professional of this type, our practical criteria are gathered in how to find a good hairdresser, with the six questions to ask before booking.
What is already moving
The situation is no longer what it was ten years ago. Hairdressers are training on their own initiative, without waiting for the official program to move. Houses that you would not have bet on taking it up first have done so: the Paris Opera, the Comédie-Française, the Théâtre du Châtelet, and hairdressers from film sets long helpless before the actresses' hair. When an institution decides that a texture is part of the profession, the question ceases to be a niche matter.
The movement also comes from neighborhood salons, often generalist, who are training because a client asked them to. It is this network that our partner salon directory lists, in the Hexagon and in the French overseas departments and territories, and it grows every month.
There remains the principle, which we carry with the Beauté pour tous collective: every woman has the right to go to the hairdresser like everyone else, whatever her texture. It is not a favor to ask, nor a service to go look for two hours from home. It is simply the profession, exercised in full.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do so many hairdressers say they don't know how?
Does it take long to train on this texture?
Can a generalist salon really welcome this clientele?
What to do when no nearby salon knows how?
How to know if a salon is really trained?
Go further
Sources
- CAP Métiers de la coiffure curriculum, decree of June 5, 2019, RNCP sheet 39266, France Compétences.
- Loussouarn G., "African hair growth parameters", British Journal of Dermatology, 2001.
