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| - I went to THORPS after a google search of Madison hair salons and mostly chose it based on the fact that I like going to places where you can choose your stylist based on experience/price and they had what I felt was reasonable prices for the services I needed.
I was getting a women's haircut and standard all over color and chose a stylist that was in the lower price range but had been working there for a long enough time that I felt comfortable. She also had curly hair in her picture on the website which usually makes me feel better about getting my own curly/unruly hair cut.
The atmosphere of THORPS is overall friendly and funky. It seems like a gathering place for hipstery people who want funky haircuts which doesn't exactly describe me, but I still felt comfortable there. My overall experience was...interesting. My stylist was not very chatty and only asked me about three questions during my 2 hours there. This was new for me as I am used to hair stylists being pros at small talk and getting me to tell them my life story while they transform my hair. While I kind of liked this because I wasn't emotionally exhausted and talked out after getting my haircut, I realized that it also means that she had zero context for the kind of life I live and how that might influence the haircut I needed. I decided that it was actually kind of important to me that my stylist understand how I do my hair and what kind of maintenance I give it.
So on to the hair cut and color. I have my favorite stylist ever in Indiana that I went to for 5 years in college and understands me on practically a spiritual level. It's tough to get compared to her, I understand. But I most recently went to my Indiana stylist and got an awesome angled bob that worked perfectly with my curly hair. I asked my THORPS stylist to essentially keep the style, but shorten it up because it had grown out. I wanted to keep the length in the front and angle it back from there with framing the hair around my face so I can scrunch and go in the morning. What I ended up with was an overall bob that has no distinguishable angle and feels a bit like a soccer mom cut. It does have good layers in it, so it's not the worst haircut in the world, but ultimately it's not what I wanted and asked for.
Now THORPS does have the policy that you can come back within the next few days to get anything trimmed or fixed if you realized that it's not working, but let's be honest. Who actually does this??? I have a busy life and it's hard enough scheduling a haircut in the first place. Plus, if I don't like something that you have done the first time, I don't really trust you to fix it the way I want the second. And even though she asked me at the end if I liked it, after spending 2+ hours there after work and not having eaten dinner yet, I'm not about to ask her to spend another 30 minutes changing something.
Overall: I didn't like my stylist and I won't be going back to her. It wasn't terrible but 3 weeks later, I'm not happy with my haircut. Other people seem to have had good experiences with other stylists though so I don't want to discredit the entire salon. I'm still trying to decide if I should give someone else at THORPS a try or if the 4.5 hour drive to Indiana is worth it for my hair stylist soulmate.
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