Stephanie Maher
Red Velvet, Crumlin
From Tallaght, Stephanie has been hairdressing since she was 13. “I got a Saturday job, and I was doing heads of highlights by the time I was sitting my Junior Cert,” she says. “It’s all I know, all I want to do. It’s my everything, far more than just a job.”
Even so, Stephanie didn’t love it immediately. “The first time I put my hand to someone’s head, I was, like, ‘That’s disgusting’. Then I found that I was good at it,” she explains. “I loved how you could change someone. They could come in looking like a bag of cats and leave looking a million dollars, and you did that. You can see how thrilled they are, and that really gets me going.”
And, of course, it isn’t just the way they look. “When someone is sitting there, relaxed, they tell you everything,” she says. “You’re not just a hairdresser, you’re a counsellor. People talk about everything, from a cheating husband to a friend who’s after their partner, to troubles with kids. You have to be quite diplomatic in what you say. You don’t want to give terrible advice. But life is very tough, especially the times we’re living in now. Everyone has problems. I try to tell people that you’re not on your own. Everyone feels the same. I have two kids I’m bringing up myself as a single mother. I identify with them, listen to the clients, and give them good hair at the same time.”
Over 16 years in haidressing, Stephanie has heard “some mad stuff ”. She says: “Sometimes it’s stuff you don’t want to hear, because you wouldn’t be equipped to deal with it. But I try my best. I had a client a few years ago, she was in a relationship with a seriously abusive partner, and she started telling me about it. I said, ‘Without getting involved here, I think you’re in a really bad domestic relationship’. Over the course of time, while I was doing her colour, we got really close. I was giving her numbers of places she could call, and she actually left him. After that, she’d come in after and tell my other clients, ‘She helped me leave my husband!’”
Doing Salon Confidential has been a good thing in Stephanie’s life. “I went through a transformation,” she says. “Realising there’s more out there than you know when you’re inside your own little bubble. Life has changed dramatically — I’m happy at work, the kids are happy, I’ve a new partner. Everything just came together.”
“I knew that if I was going in to do the show, I was going to be real,” she says. “I’m very honest, very black and white. I talk about my dating experience, about being a mother, the things that have happened to me over the years. I want to show people that you’re not on your own.”