PURPLETASTIC! My love affair with purple shampoo.

Ok, so the long-awaited purple shampoo entry! What is purple shampoo, how does it work, and why is it so awesome?

Before we answer those questions, we'll need a little background!

DOMINANT PIGMENT

also known as contributing pigment, underlying pigment, or residual pigment, is a key element in determining the color of your hair, and comes into play when lightening your hair either chemically or naturally. Let's take for example someone with dark, black asian hair who wants to be a blonde. When you lighten their hair with lightener (bleach! usually hydrogen peroxide), it doesn't go straight from black to blonde. Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), breaks up and oxygen (O2) molecules attack the melanin molecules in your hair responsible for your hair color. There are two types of melanins in your hair, eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin is responsible for darker brown and black tones while pheomelanin provides red, yellow, and ginger tones. Anyways, so when you have hydrogren peroxide in your hair it attacks the bigger eumalenin molecules first; they're easier to separate. These molecules break down into oxymelanin, which is similar in tone to phemelanin. What this all means is that your hair lightens progressively, as eumelanin is broken down first then pheomelanin. As the ratio of eumelanin decreases, pheomelanin becomes more apparent and the tone of your hair goes through stages: black -> brown -> red -> red-orange -> gold -> yellow. This can also happen naturally, hair expose to the sun becomes oxidized, and brown hair turns reddish while blonde or white hair turns goldish.

This oxidation, whether natural or chemical, is where purple shampoo comes into play. When your hair is lightened in the salon, it's usually followed with a toner to create a suitable haircolor; no one likes leaving the salon with orangy hair! The toner chosen is highly dependent on the level which the hair is lightened to. Each level of lightness has a different underlying pigment to deal with, and it is toned with a color that will neutralize that. Basically if you looked a color wheel, find the color of the underlying pigment and go directly across and that's the color base to neutralize it with. So a green base will neutralize a red dominant pigment, a blue will neutralize an orange/gold shade, and what will neutralize yellow? PURPLE! The chart sums up everything we've talked about here, showing each level of lightness and it's dominant/neutralizing pigment =)






















So purple shampoo helps blondes and nordic blondes (grey/white!) deal with the natural oxidation that comes along with having very light hair, neutralizing brassy/yellow tones in the hair. I went blonde a few months ago and I love being a blonde but my hair goes yellow fast, it loves warm tones. Usually I don't really mind it so much but I decided to give my boss's purple shampoos a try and see what they'd do to my hair. I use it all the time in the time in the salon and it's always had great results so I had high hopes, and it didn't disappoint. You can see in the picture here what my hair looked like before and after! I used the Greg May Ultra Violet shampoo and conditioner, which deposits purple color pigment into your hair as you wash/condition it! One or two washes with the shampoo, and I left the conditioner in for a few minutes in the shower (you can even use it under heat for even better results), and it toned down all the brassiness in my hair! You can see it's a lot less yellow and more of a cool, wheaty color; more blonde! It's awesome, I love it. Plus, the shampoo is actually a really pretty purple color -> +1billion cool points.

You can buy the Greg May Ultra Violet at the salon or at the online store! http://www.gregmayproducts.com !

Product of the Week! ::

So, in celebration of the launch of the salon's new E-store ( www.gregmayproducts.com ), I'm going to introduce a new feature to this blog today and that is the PRODUCT OF THE WEEK! Very exciting. This week's first product is my favorite product of all time, I'm sure I've mentioned it before:

GREG MAY: SMOOTH OPERATOR

This is by far the best product I've ever worked with; since we first got it in I don't think I've done a single blow-dry without it. It was formulated to be both a leave-in treatment rich in natural, botanical ingredients (chamomile, lemongrass, sage, witch hazel, aloe, and others). You wash your hair and towel dry it then put about a quarter-size amount of it and comb it through your damp hair before you blow dry it. It's best used with heat; the more you use it with heat the better your hair will feel! But you can use it without heat as well, I put a bit in my hair while its wet then just let it air dry cause I don't blow dry my hair usually. It's also a smoothing balm, and it's AMAZING for people with frizzy hair. But no matter what texture your hair is it'll leave your hair feeling noticeably smooth and shiny. In the salon this product is our best-selling styling product and it basically sells yourself, all I have to do is have my clients feel their hair after it's blowdried with this stuff and you're hooked!

The best thing about this product though is that the more we used it the more surprises it had! Although originally formulated for frizzy hair to smooth it out, every single type of hair we used on it benefitted from it. And although smoothing products are not meant for volume, Smooth Operator doesn't inhibit the body of your hair.


This and all future products of the week can be bought at Greg May Hair Architects (124 Cumberland, Toronto, ON, m5r 1a6) or at our new e-salon http://www.gregmayproducts.com

Fun stuff!

Ok, so I apologize for the gap between the last entry and this one; salon life has been crazy this week! But I've gotten up to some fun hair over the past week or so and wanted to share some:


So this is one of my best friends Tania and she had a photoshoot a couple weeks ago. The cut/color hasn't been done in a little while but it was a fun little style. Just barrel-curled with a big curling iron, pinned up and shook loose! Very simple, maybe I'll make a tutorial video soon showing how to do it at home. She's got great hair and makes anything I do to it look good!














This is Alayna, I did her hair for a catalogue shoot last weekend with the fabulous Angela Y. Martin . I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with her hair until she was sitting in my chair. I had the flat iron in my hand and started playing with it and was loving what I was getting, so I did that all through the back and sides and then left a piece in the front smoother kinda blending back. It ended up being my favorite style I did that day!






















I had Monday off this week and what did I do? I ended up in the salon anyways and some fun with a couple of my friends, Grace (left) and Karyn (right). Grace had stripped all her color out in Cuba. We had already prelightened out diagonal straps on each side so we just top-coated her whole head with my favorite PM Shines color "Ruby Slippers" and trimmed up her bob. For Karyn she wanted somethign with a bit more punch so I prelightened a big triangle on top of her head and used Paul Mitchell INKWORKS to color it that bright red color. INKWORKS is a vegetable-dye that Paul Mitchell has that's the best way to get nice vibrant colors =)

milestones

Wow! What a crazy week. Our receptionist Serena is on vacation this week so I've been leading a double life: reception-desk junkie in the morning and just everything for the rest of the say. I've kind of been enjoying it though, despite the long hours, it's given me a new perspective of how the place runs. It's kind of cool to know everything that's going on; I enjoy it.

This morning I went and did the hair for a shoot with the fabulous Angela Y. Martin, who also did a shoot for us at the salon a few weeks ago. Check out her stuff, it's amazing: http://aymphotography.com/ Will put up some shots as soon as I get them!

So today's gonna be a lighter entry, and I'll follow this over the next couple days with some more fun technical stuff =)

I've hit a few personal milestones this week I'd like to share with you all! First off, this week marks four years in Canada for me, and even though I never came up here to do hair, I'm glad that I happened to be here when I wanted to get into it. Back home in Massachusetts, to get into the hair business before you can work in a salon you have to put in your school hours. It costs and arm and a leg but you need 1,000hours (I'm not 100% sure on this number, but it's around this) in the classroom before you can even start in a salon, and when you do, you start at the bottom as an assistant. This is how I assumed it was everywhere, cause I had no reason to think otherwise and it's pretty reasonable. So when I graduated from U of T last last May, I knew I wanted to get into hair but I thought it would be a few years before I could save up the money to get myself into school here in Toronto. I was desperately looking for a job because I was working at U of T at the time in a position only for students, so I couldn't stay there (nor did I really want to), and I was also having visa issues. Being an immigrant is really no fun, but luckily for me the law changed right when I needed to and I got my visa, so I started looking for jobs. I was planning on going into make-up school in the fall cause I could afford that and I thought it might be an asset, but I was looking for a salon to work at just as a receptionist or something like that so that I could get my foot in the door somewhere. So I went for an interview at a really high-end salon downtown and the owner interviewing me asked me if I was going for the assistant or the apprentice position. I told him the assistant cause I hadn't been to school yet and he said I didn't have to have! That changed everything. He explained the apprenticeship program here, which basically lets you learn in the salon (which means you're getting paid to learn instead of dropping $15,000 to) and you only have to do two short classes with the board of apprenticeship. So I started looking for jobs as an apprentice and that's how I found my spot at Greg May Hair Architects! I was so happy, a month out of school and I was already on my way to exactly the career I wanted. So thank you, Ontario!

Q & A: Color & Texture + Demis and Semis and Toners, oh my!

You guys rock, we got some really good questions on the last entry which actually bring me into topics I wanted to talk about next!

But before that lemme tell you a bit about what we at the salon did today, it was very exciting. Greg, April, Julia and I did the hair for the Style Box launch fashion show! Check out some of the pictures (thanks to Anita) here! and check out the Style Box website here! A big thanks to them for inviting us out, we had a great time!

Ok, the first question asked me whether coloring your hair will thicken your hair or not. Well, it kinda goes back into what I was talking about in the last entry about how color gets into your hair (see entry below!). Sometimes after a chemical process like coloring or perming, your hair can feel a bit fuller andhas a little more body. There is a reason for this...you're cuticle is damaged! Not necesarily to a point to be concerned about at all, but when the chemical opens up your hair shaft sometimes it damages it so that the cuticle can't lay back down quite as flat as it did before. This can happen if the hair color you use has a lot of ammonia (again, this is why I prefer using Paul Mitchell the color, which has the lowest and most consistent concentration of ammonia on the market), or if you pre-lighten (bleach) your hair. My hair is super super flat and straight and part of the reason I like keeping it blonde is cause it gives me lots of volume because of this very reason! If you click on the picture to the left you can compare for yourself; you'll see the blonde version lays less flat (and I used the same product in both, so it's not the product!). As a sidenote, this is why highlights [or some blonde color-blocking, like mine that Greg did for me!] are sometimes a good option for people looking for a little bit more volume or oomf in their hair!

Ok, and the second question had a few parts, and we'll take each in turn. To quote: " Jenn A. said... 'Mike, what's the deal with toner? my hairdresser gave me some highlights to mask my grey, but then put a toner on it because it was too blond imo. the toner seemd to get me the color i wanted, but since then, the highlights seem to have lightened with every shampooing. is it possible that my HD can put a toner on it again so it goes back to the orginial color i wanted? should i have used shampoo for color treated hair?'"

Toner is haircolor used on hair that's already been pre-lightened to either change the tone or darken it up in case it went just a little bit too light, and they're usually either semi-permanent or demi-permanent. So!, let me explain the differences between different types of color. There's permanent color, semi-permanent, demi-permanent, and temporary hair color. Temporary color is so because it doesn't penetrate the hair shaft in anyway. It doesn't lift the cuticle and merely deposits color molecules that stick to the hair shaft. The most common forms of this are color shampoos (not shampoo tha makes hair color last longer, but shampoo that actually deposits color, usually to help tone yellow shades, but I'm planning to get into this more in my next entry when I discuss purple shampoo), and all that spray-on junk you find in costume shops.

Semi-permanent color is just a step above temporary; the color molecules are small enough to get into the cuticle (but not into the cortex, like permanent hair color) and stain it, but also small enough to wash out easily, so they usually only last 4-6 weeks.

Demi-permanent is even a step above this, and the main difference is that demi-permanent use an oxidizing agents where semis do not. So what this means is that the demi-permanent is more like a "permanent color light", it acts like a permenent color using hydrogen peroxide to penetrate into the cortex, but with a much more dilute solution of it, so there's only deposit of color without breaking up the existing pigment. This means that a demi-permanent color can only make your hair darker because it's adding pigment on top of what's already in your hair. In my salon we do a LOT of demi-permanents. Paul Mitchell makes a transluscent demi-permanent glaze called PM Shines that lasts 6-8 weeks. It's a protein-based color so it ads lot of shine and silkiness back into your hair; imagine a color that actually improves the condition of your hair every time you use it! I do these on my clients (and on myself) whenever they're staying the same level of darkness or going darker cause they can feel such a difference whenever we use it as opposed to regular permanent color that can dry hair out sometimes. There's even a clear version we use as a treatment!

But anyways, toners are usually a color mixed with a low-volume peroxide and done on wet hair at the sink or we often even dry the hair and use a PM Shines on it; both are demi-permanent. Now because they're demi-permanent they are giong to fade faster than a regular permanent color would, and the fading will first be noticeable on the highlights because the base color the demi-permanent was put over is lighter, whereas the rest of the hair won't get any lighter than the color it was before the toner was applied.

Should you be using a color shampoo? Let me answer this one with a story. Our receptionist Serena got highlights put in a few months back on a whim and they were toned to a color she likes but by the next week they were totally orange. So I did a PM Shine over her whole head to tone down the orange and darken them up a bit, and by the next week they had faded out again!!! I couldn't figure out why, but what was I gonna do then? So we did another PM Shines, a little darker this time, and while I was at the sink washing it out I asked her what kind of stuff she was using on it at home. She told me she was using a Pantene clarying shampoo. What's a clarifying shampoo? Just what it sounds like, it's an acidic shampoo that opens your cuticle and strips out dirt. It's good for people that use a lot of product, or it's good to use like once a week for people that use really silky conditioners the rest of the time, to strip out build-up. But! It also strips out COLOR! So I told her she needed to start using a color-friendly shampoo, and she did, and her color lasted infinitely longer. So I definitely reccomend using a shampoo that's specifically made for color-treated hair, no matter what kind of color you've had done. At the shop we have a few in particular I reccomend, Greg May Color Continue shampoo and conditioner, Sixty Second Silk shampoo/conditioner (not made specifically for color, but has proteins in it that make it still very good to use on colored hair), and a special conditioner we have called Locked In. Locked In is actually really cool cause what it does is it deposits a layer of clear color molecules onto your hair that protects the colored color molecules! And makes your hair really shiny to boot.

I didn't get to the last question about bright vibrant colors tonight, but I will in the next entry, as well as the mystery behind purple shampoos!

And as always, all the products and services mentioned in this entry can be found at GREG MAY HAIR ARCHITECTS.

Color me.

So Sundays at the salon are pretty awesome; it's just me and my boss Greg that come in, so we always have the whole place to ourselves. Well we had this one client in today, she's a good client of Greg's and he always does some fun block coloring on her. Last time she was in he did a medley of cool red tones that had since faded to a red-orange that we all decide still looked pretty good! So instead of doing an cool reds/red violets Greg used some orange reds, and it turned out awesome. It got me started thinking a lot about color today; when I look at a color chart my eyes never really go towards the orange/yellow end of the spectrum (I've always despised the color yellow since childhood), but maybe I should really stop discriminating and start experimenting with some hot orange hues!

A couple weeks ago Greg gave me a copy of his old educator's manual from when he worked as a Paul Mitchell educator/artist,, and it's fascinating. It's really inspired me to try out new colors and really learn color as a science as well as an art. You can't mix hair colors like water colors, and you can't use the same color on two different heads of hair and expect the same results (this is reason #1 of 14bajiliion why drugstore box color is a bad idea!). Everyone's hair adds that certain X-factor into the mix, and that's determined by a few key properties of the hair.

But before we get into that lemme explain a bit about hair works (his is where I pull out a white-board, Bill Nye style). The shaft of each individual hair has three basic layers: the medulla, the cortex, and the cuticle. The medulla is just the core of your hair, it's not really involved in any of the color process, and a lot of natural blondes or people with fine hair lack medullas altogether! The cuticle is kinda like the shingles on a roof, little overlapping flaps all around the hair than can open and close (when they all lie flat is when you get the silky smooth feeling). The cortex is where all the color in your hair is contained. There are two types of melanin that give your hair your individual shade: eumelanin, a darker melanin that makes brown/black shades, and phaeomelanin, which is responsible for blondes and redheads. Anyone can have any mixture of these two pigments, and it can even vary within an individual! For example, my hair is a medium brown (a mix of both melanins), but my beard grows in with a lot of blonde and red hairs (no eumelanin!), and my eyebrows are much darker than everything else (more eumelanin)!




So when you go to a salon and we make a color for you, we mix together two basic components, a developer and the actual color. This mixture contains ammonia, dye intermediates, and hydrogen peroxide. Ammonia in my hair, ew! Why? Ammonia is the agent that opens up the cuticle layer and allows the color to penetrate into the cortex of the hair, the main battleground for the reaction. Once in the hair the hydrogen peroxide attacks the melanin in your hair and breaks it down into pigmentless molecules, releasing sulfur into the air (which is why with some color lines you get that nasty smell). While this is going on the hydrogen peroxide has also activated the dye intermediates and create the new color molecules to deposit into your cortex!
This is why when you dye your hair even a darker color it can fade lighter than your natural color, because you're destroying some of your natural pigmentation before the artificial color goes into your hair, so once all this new pigment fades out, your left with just the natural pigment that was spared by the peroxide.

So the major benefit of salon color really is that we can customize each of these individual components that go into a hair color. We pick a developer that the right amount of hydrogen peroxide to give your hair the best base to deposit your new color onto and create a shade that'll take into account the properties of the natural pigment of your hair (since peroxide doesn't strip it all out). Your hair is like no one else's, and can and should reflect that!

This can be a jarring process on your hair, and that's why choosing the right color line is also important. When I was younger at my mom's shop she used to use Goldwell. My hair is naturally pin straight and very soft, I never had to use conditioner if I didn't feel like it, and I found after even one color service my hair felt dry and matte. You can't always totally avoid this (no matter what color you use you're chemically opening and closing your cuticle), but there are definitely some lines out there that help to minimize the effects. That why at my salon we offer Paul Mitchell the color. It's got the lowest amount of ammonia of any color line, so it's not blasting the cuticle open like other lines do sometimes, it's much more gentle. It's also a beeswax base so it's conditioning your hair while the color is being done (and it makes the color really thick, so we can give you a big spike while you're processing, all punk-rock style), and there's menthol in it (same stuff as in halls!), so you don't get it's aromatherapeutic and you don't get that headache from the sulfur smell.

And when you've got a good line to work with it makes it that much more fun cause you get to focus on the fun part; the best part for me is always getting to play matchmaker and finding the formula that'll get along with my client's hair's individual personality, to reflect my client's personality! =)


Book your color experience!: i'm available sundays/wednesday/thursdays for bookings! call GREG MAY HAIR ARCHITECTS at 416 920-8892 to make your appointment! [cuts/colors start at $55]

Stay tuned for the upcoming entries on hair color: [Different Types of Color: Permanent vs. Semi-perm vs. Demi-Perm], [What is purple shampoo?]

Q & A: Tools that make a difference

Ok, so, this entry is going to be mostly in response to some very good questions I got in the comment section of the last article; you guys're on the ball! The first question I'm going to address is the issue of why you should invest in a professional tool instead of a dryer/brush you can get at Shopper's or CVS. I use them on clients in a different capacity than the average user, so do you really need one just as high-quality/expensive?
As far as blow dryers are concerned, they're not as expensive as you'd think. The one I use is the Elchim 2001 Classic and I found it for only $70, making it the cheapest one I've used, even though I find it to be the best. Just google "Elchim 2001 Classic" and there's a bunch of beauty websites you can buy them from. I can't remember exactly which I used but the layout was pink, and they were good.

Truth be told I'm sure some with easy hair can get along just fine with a Goody round-brush, but there are definitely advantages to spending the extra money. I did some research, and I found that most drug-store round brushes that're considered ionic (I'll get to this in a bit) run in the range of $8-$13. The Paul Mitchell Ion round brushes that I use in the salon cost $18-20 at your local salon.
So what're you getting for that extra $5-8? Ions! Drugstore brushes say they're ceramic, but they're only ceramic coated, which means they don't give off nearly as much ionic energy as a full ceramic professional round brush does. And more often than not you'll find the bristles warp and start to look like little hooks. No fun!
So what does this mean? What's the deal with ions, anyways? Ceramic brushes (as well as ceramic straightening irons and curling irons) give off negative ions which in a number of ways changes the process in which your hair dries. Water molecules are positively charged, so when they're bombarded with negative ions, these negative ions attract them and attach to them, effectively breaking them into smaller molecules. Some of these smaller molecules can now penetrate into the hair shaft while others left on the surface now evaporate more quickly. This means that not only is your hair drying faster, but it's a "wet" dry instead of a "dry" dry, because you're actually drying water INTO your hair! How cool is that? You're essentially drying your hair from the inside-out! So, even though your hair might feel like it's getting hotter and making you think you're damaging it, it's actually much healthier for it.
Ions also pump up the final result of your blow dry. Not only do the negative ions help seal the cuticle better (giving you nice shiny shiny hair and helping seal split ends), but they break up static electricity that causes frizz!


This leads me into the next question I'm to answer today. Ashley asks about using her straightening iron everyday on her thick, curly, virgin (aka never-been-colored!) hair, and how to prevent it from drying up. The key really is two things: an ionic flat iron and product! A ceramic ionic straightening iron has all the same benefits as a ceramic round-brush; they actually lock moisture into your hair and prevent it from drying out! The Paul Mitchell one I use costs around $200 depending on where you buy it form, but will last you a long time, and you will definitely notice a difference; a worthy investment. And product product product! There are a number of products out there that can actually protect your hair and create a shield from any attack on the health of your hair. There are lots of products out there that can do this, but my boss Greg has his own line of Greg May hair products (available at our salon and soon off our website: http://www.gregmayhair.com ), which I love, and the product I always always always use before I use a straightening iron on a client or friend's hair is his Smooth Operator. It's a leave-in treatment that actually improves the quality of your hair every time you use it with heat (like a blow dryer or iron!) as well as speeds up dry time! It's under $20 and lasts a long time; every client I've sent home with it can't live without it. And it smells nice, like really expensive orange juice. =)

I risk sounding like a commercial in this entry, but buying the right tools and the right products are really key to not only keeping your hair in tip-top shape, but keeping you from going insane trying to manage it! I'm not here to sell, but to educate =D

So that's all for today, I'll get to the other questions in the entries to come!