My Refinery29 YouTube series, Lucie for Hire, gives me the opportunity to explore someone else's job for a day, which means that over the past year I've tried some pretty awesome roles. I've made my own Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavour, danced with the Radio City Rockettes, and even trained like a professional gymnast. But no job has made me feel quite as much pressure as my most recent: becoming a hair colourist for a day.
My new role started at FOURTEENJAY, a salon in the heart of NYC's Tribeca neighbourhood, where I learned from two of the salon's master colourists before taking on a client of my own. Even though my client, Emily, is a personal friend of mine, I was instructed to treat her like any other customer that walked in the front door. That means I offered her food and drinks from the salon's menu, massaged her hands with moisturising lotion, and made sure she was comfortable through the entire experience. But let's back up for a sec...
My day started with a crash course in colour theory before moving onto custom colour formulation, application, and, finally, a lesson in blowouts and styling. Working alongside colourist Deanna, we lightened Emily's hair before adding the copper colour she wanted. The whole process was extremely meticulous. My stress came not only from the physical, on-your-feet-all-day nature of this job, but from the idea that a person's physical appearance was riding on my performance. (Eek!) Check out the video above to see how I did...