Life in the Golden State

Lauren Conrad epitomizes the California girl. Having grew up in Orange County and now conquering LA and beyond, she's certainly a style icon. She has gorgeous hair. To this day, one of my most searched posts is one that I did about the famous "Lauren Conrad braid". She did it, I did it, you probably did it. It was adorable!

Once a bleached blonde, LC now has more of a natural sun kissed glow. It's almost a reversed blonde. The lightest hair starts at the her ends and gradually gets darker, closer to the scalp. As a result, she has permanent, classy roots as opposed to pesky, trashy roots. I don't mean to offend anyone - I've done those roots...more times than I want to admit to you or myself.

Recently I switched hair dressers and little did I know that'd mean a whole new look for me. I went in to have my dark roots touched up to match the rest of my white hair...yeah, not blonde, white. The amazing Michele, owner of Rock Paper Salon in Echo Park, spent an hour just discussing my hair with me. After explaining that the bleach was damaging my hair so badly that strands could snap off at the root at any moment, I was all in for whatever repair route she had in mind. Me bald? Not a good look.

I had always been into LC and Jennifer Aniston's hair and we agreed that it'd work well with my complexion so we decided to go for it. Now this process is not easy. I've spent over 10 years bleaching at the root. Whenever there is any growth it looks horrible; however, I had to bite the bullet and we stayed away from plastering dye on the scalp. Instead, Michelle worked her ass off incorporating six, yes S-I-X, shades of blonde and carmel into my hair with minimal scalp contact. Although I didn't get my roots touched up like normal, that didn't matter. My hair still looked a million times better. It also helped that she spent about an hour cutting my hair to emphasize each of the new shades. She explained the process so simply: it's like playing pool. Although you may be tempted to take the first shot, you've got to set yourself up for the rest of the game. You don't want to be forced to shoot the 8 ball too soon. Translation: it would be easy to put a ton of color on the roots to make it look perfect, but that wouldn't get my color to where we want it. It needs to gradually fade.

This week I went back in for round two and it looks even better this time around. If this is the transition of bleached to golden hair, I can't even imagine how amazing my 'do will be when she's done. With her talents, I am confident that Michelle will have my hair looking like that of LC. (Side note: true story, The Hills theme song just came on Pandora LOL!)

I'm way excited that I've found Michelle! If you live in the LA area I highly suggest you make an appointment with her. She genuinely cares about hair and her clients. Her goal is to make them look and feel good and she does a fantastic job doing both!

For more information about Michelle and Rock Paper Salon, visit their site or call (213)-250-0900.

Photos courtesy of: Just Jared, HoneyMag.com, backseatcuddler.com, and examplehairstyles