I've always wanted to experiment with different colors but that would involve a lot of lightening because of years and years of color buildup. My dream was to eventually have pretty lilac/violet hair just like entrepreneur/model Doe Deere.
This is as delusional as I get... hahaha, even if I had her beautiful Russian features and pale white skin, my thick dark asian hair wouldn't last with the constant bleaching. But I wanted to push through despite the numerous drawbacks, I originally intended to get it done after college, but if I don't land a job in Advertising, I might be thrown into Public Relations or Journalism which are definitely kill my quirky dreams of purple hair. I was leaving for Korea in a week and I decided that it was the perfect time to sport a new hair color.
The hairdresser bleached my hair twice. Why? The black dye buildup was an absolute pain to remove! So we bleached-dyed-bleached-dyed till I had the color that was fairly OK! I had to settle for something quite mediocre because my hair was under a lot stress already.
It is a fairly nice shade of violet under natural light but when the sun goes down...
It starts to look like a reddish-brown shade! Totally not my thing, the worse part of it is, it clashes with my royal blue dresses, and I have a LOT of blue dresses! During the first two weeks, my hair bled to death...the tub was an absolute mess! And by the third week, not a single trace of violet could be seen, only a head full of bleached hair! I dyed it violet again but I just couldn't take it anymore... It looked awful and I consistently had to watch out for color clashing with my wardrobe.
I purposely faded out the second violet dye job with sulfate containing hair products and took it upon myself to dye my hair, this time, RED!
After a week of research on what's the best Red box dye in the market, a lot of netizens and youtubers suggested LOREAL Magicolor Hi-lights. I couldn't find it anywhere so I decided to visit a local beauty store and found this instead: Loreal Excellence Fashion in P66 (Intense Red)
The box contains a dye primer, hair dye, color developer, conditioner and an easy application tube. However, I suggest that you use an old plastic/ceramic (never metal) bowl and a brush applicator when you color own hair for even results.
After rinsing my hair, I was immediately impressed with the color pay-off and the beautiful shine.
It looks very vibrant under natural light but with camera flash it tends to get copper-ish in color. Nevertheless, it's absolutely stunning to say the least. These photos were taken a couple of days before I dyed my hair back to black, since school was about to resume.
All in all I had 2 bleach jobs, 2 violet hair dyes, 2 red hair dyes and a black hair dye done all in 2-3 months! During the last dye jobs, my hair has become extremely gummy when wet. I now have no choice but to deal with my damaged hair on a daily basis by using essential oils to keep it shiny and smooth, but if you want red hair... DO NOT BE DISCOURAGED! Red dye adheres better to healthy hair! It's molecules are too huge to penetrate into the hair follicle that's why bleaching isn't really required. :)
My lilac/purple dreams have now been crushed, all I can ever think of is getting my hair dyed red on a regular basis. Everybody loved it and despite certain color clashes with my wardrobe, it wasn't as bad as my violet do, I can still wear my royal blue dresses with no trouble at all.
And a super hurrah for L’Oreal Paris Excellence Fashion in P66 (Intense Spicy Red)! I recommend this particular line of hair dye to anyone who would like to try out Red for the first time.
Happy midweek to everyone,
DianeShishio
