To Dye For

I don’t know about you, but I always feel oddly drab at the change of seasons. All of my clothes are either too warm or too cold. It’s late for the grays and blacks of winter, and early for the tangerine and turquoise waiting for me in my summer clothes. The same goes with makeup. None of it looks quite right. I feel pale and pallid, and overcompensate with too much.

Normally I just get through those strange weeks with a steady stream of complaining and shopping therapy. This year, I opted for something more pleasant both for my wallet and the company I keep. Instead of just accepting that I wouldn’t like the transition, I made a pretty drastic change to my appearance – well, drastic for me, at least. We’ll get to that in a minute.

Seiren Salon, in the Jewelry District, is unique in that it only does one thing: hair. There have been so many times that I’ve been in salons with menus of service that are pages upon pages long, only to ask about one and have the receptionist tell me, “oh, we don’t do much of that… what about something else?” Stephanie Lisi, Seiren’s owner, says that they keep it simple – cut, color, styling – for exactly that reason: so they can do one thing, and do it really well.

When I talked to Stephanie, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to change, but I knew I wanted to do something. She suggested color. I love the idea of changing my hair on a whim, but I’m completely, unshakably, probably unreasonably phobic about that level of commitment. I told her I’d be willing to give it a shot if she could find a way to meet these criteria: no roots, no lasting damage to my hair, no color that necessitates tons of costly and time-consuming regular maintenance. I didn’t actually think this would be possible. If we’re being honest here, I gave her a tall order on purpose so I wouldn’t have to take a risk; I had a terrible experience with Keratin once (the special needed-to-lop-off-eight-inches-of-hair kind of terrible) and it left me gun-shy about major hair processes.

To my surprise, Stephanie had an answer for me: semi-permanent color. Apparently, there are three levels of dye – permanent color, which involves removing pigment and replacing it with dye; demi-permanent, which is less damaging but basically the same idea; and semi-permanent, which is deposit-only color, meaning that it adds pigment to the hair without stripping it of any natural color or texture. That I could handle.

Because of its transient nature, semi-permanent dye isn’t a long-term solution for people looking to change their hair color. It’s more like a conditioning treatment that also comes with a color change, or just enhances your natural shade (think richer, glossier, but still yours). You can use it to add a lot of color, but it’s going to wash out in six weeks. Perfect for me.

So, knowing that the worst that could possibly happen in this scenario was that I wouldn’t love the color, I told Stephanie to go dark. Really dark. As-dark-as-possible dark. I went from gun-shy to trigger happy as quickly as you can say “her roots are showing.” Stephanie wisely talked me out of going goth, and into a dark, rich auburn shade. I’m three weeks in and I absolutely love it. The color is holding up really nicely, and it’s just enough of a change to energize me until sundress season.