Living Beautifully: First Impressions

“Hair style is the final tip-off whether or not a woman really knows herself.”
~ Hubert De Givenchy, Vogue (July 1985)

SPRING'S in the air. You’ve just gotten a new makeover and your face looks fab! Maybe you’ve added a few new pieces to your wardrobe, but now your hair style needs a serious update.

Brenda Kinsel, bestselling author of several books, including 40 over 40: 40 Things Every Woman Over 40 needs to Know About Getting Dressed, shares this interesting hair tip:

“Go to a new hair designer looking your best self. Introduce yourself to the hairdresser fully clothed the first time, before they get you into a smock. Let the hairdresser see who you are. Here’s a place where first impressions will really help ensure that you get the cut that works with your lifestyle and taste.”

Although what I'm going to tell you isn’t a hair salon experience, I’ll always remember when I first came to the city as a young woman looking for her first job. I decided to put in my application at a temporary agency, hoping that this step would help get my foot in the door of a nice place to work in the downtown area.

But I didn’t think at the time that it really mattered to dress up for this initial interview with the agency – after all it wasn’t an employer who was seeing me. But I began to wonder when the jobs I kept getting were never in those nice offices downtown, but in more casual, industrial kind of places. It wasn’t until much later that I realized the agency's first impression of me was that I was a 'jeans' kind of girl, and so the jobs they sent me to were to the casual jeans kind of sites.

It’s true, first impressions matter...at job interviews, and now we learn even at hair salons. If you haven’t been getting the style you want, maybe you’re giving them the wrong impression of who you are in ‘real’ life.

I never really thought about what I was wearing or how my hair looked when I arrived at a salon; after all, they were going to wash it and re-do it all anyway.  But if they only see me...you... in a way that doesn't reflect us at our most authentic times, no wonder we can walk away disappointed. 

That first impression turns out to be the unconscious standard they refer to forever after. So it's something to keep in mind for all our first encounters... not just in hair salons.

Here’s to living your life more beautifully... more truly you!