
Rodrick Samuels on The Silent Work, Modern Beauty Education and Why Empathy Wins
MODERN SALON sat down with Samuels to discuss the book, beauty education, mentorship and the habits that help beauty professionals thrive.
Do you remember this story? This poor client, Camille, received the WORST cut and color from a local salon and three hairdressers joined forces, free of charge, to help her (see the first 2 links to the stories below). The three artists: ...








The latest transformation (with original before shot).
Do you remember this story? This poor client, Camille, received the WORST cut and color from a local salon and three hairdressers joined forces, free of charge, to help her (see the first 2 links to the stories below). The three artists: Caroline Guiney (@caroline_anythingbutbasic), Breanna Little (@breanna_anythingbutbasic) and Melanie Prescott(@melanie_anythingbutbasic) are all based at the Butterfly Loft Ubungalows in the Encino area of Los Angeles.
We just received an update on Camille from Butterfly Loft owner, David Thurston: "I just had the pleasure and privilege of chatting with Camille," says Thurston. "One thing that doesn’t show in the pictures is just how cool and down-to-earth Camille is. She was really easy to talk to."
Here Thurston shares a few tidbits from their conversation:
-Camille was aware that her before and after photos we blowing up on Social Media and she found it weird to be known for her hair and to be talked about so much. She read through many of the comments and was shocked at the number of people who claimed that the before and after were two different people. She purposefully scrunched up her nose on the before photo to visually show she hated her hair in that photo, and then showed a normal face on the after photo, leading so many commentaries to claim it was two different people.
-She said that many of the people closest to her (including her Mom) kept telling her the botched haircut she got looked good, and downplayed how traumatic it was.
-She said many stylists offered to help, but that most said the only solution was to chop off all her hair. She ended up going to Caroline, Breann, and Melanie because they let her know there are usually more than one way to get to where you want to go, and they came up with a solution that used extensions, until the hair grew out more. I asked if she had to be careful how she styled her hair so people didn’t see the taped in extensions, and she confessed that occasionally the wind blows or the hair moves and the extensions are visible, but she explains to people when they ask, that she got a botched haircut and this is a temporary solution. It hasn’t happened more than on a couple of occasions, but she far prefers this solution to cutting off more of her hair.
-Camille has been back one time between now and then. She came in for an Olaplex treatment to help get her hair in great shape.
-While working on her, Caroline showed me how much growth she had and showed me how her hair is in such better shape.
-I asked, “what went wrong?”, and it sounds like the previous stylist just went through a series of events that led to a downward spiral. He fried the hair, started cutting off pieces of damaged hair, and just kept going. He left it totally uneven, and in the end didn’t acknowledge that there was anything wrong with it, even when Camille pointed out the obvious flaws, he never would own up to it.
-Since it happened, Camille moved to the other side of Los Angeles, but she still made the journey back to Butterfly Loft to get her hair therapy from Caroline, who seems like she has a well-thought out plan to nurse her hair back into great shape while using extensions as the solution to give her dignity, and make her look great until her natural hair is all back in great shape.

MODERN SALON sat down with Samuels to discuss the book, beauty education, mentorship and the habits that help beauty professionals thrive.

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