Hair coloring can be an art. But sometimes it’s just work, diligence, sacrifice, and a routine

Interview with Mary, a professional hair colorist from Prague

Not everyone would consider hair care an art, but professional hairdressers today are not just handymen with scissors. It’s a craft that has many branches and techniques, coloring being just one of them. Professional colorists are people, whose job is to bring a little more fun into clients´ hair and a little more color to our world. Prague colorist Mary Malinovska knows all about it. 

Mary is a well-known Prague hairdresser who originally had no plans to take care of hair professionally. When she moved to the Czech Republic from Belarus, she found a job in a small salon and the rest was in the hands of fate. Today, she is one of the most in-demand and creative hairdressers in town. 

Q: Let’s start at the beginning. When you moved to Prague, did you head straight to hair salons for work? 

A: Working with hair was just a hobby until then. I had been coloring and cutting my friends’ hair, so I figured I had some experience, so I went to look for work in a hair salon. They told me to bring in some models and show them what I could do. I still remember the owner’s reaction: ‘When you’re working, I see that you’re in chaos and you do everything intuitively, but the result is good in the end. We’ll take you on.’

Q: Did you think of it as a money-making job? Or did you know that taking care of your hair was your passion? 

A: Well, it was a risky job because I didn’t have the money for a retraining course. But I took it as a stepping stone to get into university until I could find another job. I tried studying filmmaking. My vision was still that I would do hair temporarily and go on to study documentary directing right out of school. But the Covid lockdown came, which was a big blow to the audiovisual industry. Hairdressing kept me afloat again. I wanted to take a break from school but then go on to direct, but the lockdown put me so far away from that, that I took on a lot of clients and ultimately was resigned to the fact that filmmaking wasn’t for me.

Q: You now have your own salon in Prague, where you train other colorists. Do you think you need to study some specific field to understand hairdressing and its foundation?  

A: You don’t have to be a trained chemist, but you have to be related to it and know a bit about it. After a couple of washes, the colors get mixed, some wash out completely, some start to change shade, and the quality of the hair goes down significantly. All this happens at the exact moment when the hairdresser doesn’t try to learn the principles of chemistry, doesn’t follow technological procedures, breaks the rules, and buys useless products. 

Q: Precision is the key then. What is your process with the client? Do you have consultations beforehand? 

A: Colors generally have rules and principles of operation, and when you understand them, you automatically match the shades to complement each other, that´s what I do. I’m going completely automatic these days. I have my favorite pigments, I know how to tell the quality of the colors and I can just improvise freely. But I always sketch it out on paper before I put anything on the head of my client and show the client what to expect, we talk about it and then get into it. I always have to stress the difficulty of taking care of such hairstyles afterward. 

Q: Do you have clients who let you do anything you like? Or do you prefer to know exactly what they want beforehand? 

A: I need the client’s full trust. I don´t cover grey hairs, I do stuff that grabs everyone´s attention. That´s why I need the client to trust me and feel relaxed. Nervousness and apprehension are always felt, which limits me. In fear of disappointing a client, my creativity is cramped. Being on the same page with a client is a must. I’ve learned to say no to people when I’m not comfortable with them. 

Q: I assume it has happened sometimes, that you or the client were not satisfied with the result. How do you deal with that? 

A: Of course, I’ve had clients who weren’t happy.  Sometimes we didn’t agree on the vision, sometimes I didn’t get it right. I’m only human and it happens to every hairdresser. But here we are back to my steady clientele. We’ve got an established routine, and a friendship and everything works like a charm. It rarely happens that someone doesn’t like it, even if the outcome is perhaps a little different than the original vision. 

But to be honest, I’m almost always unhappy with it myself! I’m a crazy perfectionist and I can’t help it. I’m always seeing mistakes and wondering how I can fix them. 

Q: Creating art on hair and putting smiles on people’s faces is a beautiful job. What would you say is the hardest part? 

A: It looks like art and fun on the outside, but there’s also hard work and chemistry, and it’s still a job in the service industry. Working with clients can be very challenging, so I’m also focusing a bit more on training now. It’s hard work though. I haven’t had to work for anyone since I was eighteen, which is great on the one hand, but a lot of responsibility on the other. I’ve been doing it for a long time, and sometimes it’s become a hard routine for me, so I try to find new things to do so I don’t completely burn out. 

Q: So what´s new on the plan for you? 

A: For several years I have been holding the idea of guest-working abroad in my head. Before the pandemic, I was looking at some salons in Berlin, but I didn’t know where to look. When I was in Barcelona this year, I immediately thought – This is it!  

Every month I’ll be flying to work at the salon of two super-talented hairdressers, with whom we’ll swap experiences and recharge each other. They work with completely different brands than I do, but I take that in turn as a challenge. I don’t know what will come of it yet. But I do know that I am determined to seek new horizons.