Cut to the chase
A brand new RTE2 show, ‘Salon Confidential’, is about to give us the low-down on what really happens between stylist and client, a relationship characterised by honesty and intimacy. Over four weeks, we will watch as dilemmas are aired, advice is given and experiences shared. And all as hot new looks are being created. So who are the nation’s new agony aunts and uncles? Emily Hourican meets them
‘Come for the hair, stay for the therapy’ could be the unofficial promise of every good salon. Yes, we book in for a cut, colour, maybe an upstyle if we’re feeling fancy, but once installed in that chair, we find ourselves confiding all sorts of things to the person in whose hands, literally, we are. We might start with holiday or weekend plans, but pretty quickly we’re on to split ends and problems with frizz, and from there it is a small step to far more personal matters: a job interview we’re nervous about; a sick mother; a partner whose love we are not feeling. Many of us tell our hairdresser things we wouldn’t tell anyone else, not our closest friends; sometimes not even our therapist, if we have one. Under cover of the general kerfuffle around towels, shampoo and the masking sound of a hairdryer, out it all comes: the worries, the fears, the stuff we don’t think is important enough for professional counselling but too gloomy to burden our friends with.
This is the exact premise of a new, four-week RTE show, Salon Confidential, which eavesdrops on these intimate conversations so that we — the TV audience — get to overhear what issues are aired. Further, and often far more fascinating, we are also privy to what suggestions or observations are offered, even as we watch a magic-wand makeover in progress.
Somewhere between walking into a salon feeling sad, scruffy, old, downtrodden, and walking out feeling a million dollars, is where the confiding begins. The show is based in a proper working salon, where hair is cut, curled, coloured just as normal, and where problems are shared, solutions are sought. Sometimes, particularly knotty dilemmas will be kicked around so everyone in the salon can add their tuppenceworth to the discussion.
The physical transformation — from frump to fab — is very evident, and each of the stylists we spoke to singled this out. One even called it a “sacred” process. But the psychological unburdening matters, too.
Salon Confidential is tapping right into that. Each week, a recurring cast of hairdressers and barbers, with their real-people clients, will together try to resolve life’s big dilemmas. Both stylists and customers have been carefully chosen. The stylists for their skills, personalities and life experience; the customers because they have a need for a makeover, but also some really good advice on a wide range of life’s questions. Love, loss, children, ageing, money, dating, dick-pics, sexism, body image and anxiety all crop up, to be discussed and analysed over a cut and colour.
Gone are boundaries of age, profession, location and social class, leaving just open, honest conversations, about the kinds of things we are all invested in.
So, meet the stylists who are the nation’s new therapists.