Review: Hair + Joy

I am not normally one for being negative on the internet. I avoid troll-y posts and am very patience with the ignorance of others. However, certain injustices cannot go unnoticed, and one of these injustices is a terrible haircut from a salon with a decent online reputation:

I look like I should be wearing ripped and baggy faded jeans, no bra under a white t-shirt, and sipping a cappuccino while talking about which of my friends are a Monica, Rachel, or Phoebe!!!

Hair + Joy in Hongdae is supposed to be one of the few salons in Seoul that specializes in cutting Western hair. It’s pretty much the only salon in Seoul you can find English reviews for and most of these reviews are pretty positive. I think, however, that these few reviews have been the only ones on the internet for a good long time and that the place has fallen from it’s once decent position.

The hairstylist I had was fucking NOT inspired by what I wanted to have done (it’s VERY rare for any hairdresser to be uninspired or unexcited to dye a person’s hair vibrant red). I said I wanted it a bright red and was having trouble deciding between something more coppery or something more orange. I said I wanted something in-between and she gave me a very “I don’t have time for this shit, just pick one of the colors I can take from the box and lets move on” attitude.  I even brought up the possibility of doing mostly copper with highlights of the other shade and received nary a response. The color job she did was incredibly dull and matte, the complete opposite of what I asked for other than the fact that it is in the red hair spectrum.

The coloring was fine, the shampooing divine (I am of the firm belief that few things in life feel nicer than a good salon shampooing), but then come the cut. I had told her earlier that I wanted about an inch and a half trimmed off (and showed her what I meant for good measure). My hair when we began was, at it’s longest layer, about halfway down my back. I left with in only a few inches passed my shoulders, what I am now calling “lazy soccer-mom length.”  She then gave me bangs… fucking bangs,  not the sweeping “slightly shorter layers so my hair drags across my forehead” that I asked for… bangs. She then layered the fuck out of it to where it is too thin towards the ends rather than layering to just give it texture, like I asked for.

Then came the fucking styling. The first time I went to Hair + Joy the coloring was acceptable (I was going for something a bit darker at that point), the cut was minimal (I asked for lots of layers and she said “no, only 2 layers is better”), and the styling was half good and half “WHAT THE HELL, LADY?!” She had her male assistant curl the majority of it and he did a really nice job. However, she then made me wait half an hour while she finished with another customer before giving me these limp, shitty curls towards the front that did not blend with the assistant’s curling job at all.

This time was WAY worse. She blew-out the top layers and the bangs until it was a gross amount of volume, and then did her same half-assed loose curls that resulted in the ends of my hair sticking horizontally straight out. She also managed the situate the curls so they would move my hair in towards my neck giving me this gross 80’s hairmet (hair helmet) effect.  I immediately ran to the bathroom and put my hair up in a ponytail once I left.

Long story short (too late) do NOT waste your money at this place and the search for an acceptable Korean salon continues… SSSIIIIGGGHHHH!!!

It looked a bit better after I washed it and styles it myself, but I am still not terribly happy.