"I'd like to add some life to this hair," Julie told Lewis as she sat in his chair for a color consult, "to maybe try and bring the 'sun into it' if that's possible, to sort of keep summer with me all year long," she said, adding one proviso, "just no copper -- red and I don't get along. I look like a Cabbage Patch Kid."
Lewis agreed that Julie's hair color was too dark and did nothing to showcase her natural beauty and sparkly sense of humor. "I'm going to bump up your base a half-shade to a shade lighter � [and ] I want to do sun-kissed natural highlights on half of your head, lighter on the top with caramel highlights."
If you have dark strands like Julie, adding face-framing, carmel-colored highlights is a great (and low maintenance way) to brighten or warm up your shade.
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The color
With the plan of action set in place, Lewis began the process of lightening Julie's dark hair and applying the highlights.
"First we're doing a 'smudge,'" he explained, "it's a process where the bleach is put on for 10 minutes, lifted, and removed and the color is smudged into place."
Following the first process, Lewis realized that he wanted to do more -- to give her base color more of a lift.
"They did do two treatments on my hair because it was so dark and had some old color on it to begin with," recalls Julie. "Also, I pull reds really easily so Alfredo did a color wash with some green in it to even out my base color to an all-over lighter tone without it turning copper." Note: If you can avoid doing an allover color and get away with just adding a few key highlights, your growth will be less obvious. In Julie's case though, that wasn't an option.
Next step? The highlights.
Once he was content with Julie's new base color, Lewis explained that he was going to do a balayage highlighting process (a French coloring technique that means "sweeping" -- as in sweeping the product onto the hair, sans foils).
To capture the "sun" as she'd wanted him to, Lewis planned to place natural light-looking highlights on the top half of her head with lighter caramel highlights framing her face.
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The brows
To complete Julie's hair color transformation, Lewis dyed her eyebrows. "Alfredo matched my eyebrows to the wash color so that it looked like my natural color," Julie says, "I've never had that done before!" We can't lie, she was a bit nervous about coloring her brows � check out her "after" to see her final thoughts on the process. Consider changing the hue of your brows the next time you have your color done -- it may help make your overall appearance more natural.
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The cut
With her new color already putting a spring into her step, Julie went to meet Craig Gangi -- a noted stylist who's worked with everyone from Jessica Simpson and Lauren Conrad to Charlize Theron and Angelina Jolie. And, today, Julie.
"I've always had these bangs," Julie explained to Gangi, "But when you're poor, it's hard to keep them up!"
Gangi smiled and explained what he had planned for Julie's full head of fabulous hair. "We're going to add in lots of long layers to give the hair lots of life, lots of movement," he said. "Layered, razor cut has your name all over it, Missy!" If you have long, one-length hair and don't want to dramatically cut it, add a ton of long layers to totally overhaul your look without losing the length you love.
Julie says that it was "cool" watching him work with the razor. "I'd never had a razor cut before and the precision with which he wielded that thing was impressive."
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The style
To give Julie maximum volume and fabulous waves, Gangi had spritzed on a volumizing spray and had her flip her head over for the first three to five minutes of the blow dry as he removed the majority of the moisture from her hair.
He completed the blow dry using a four-inch round brush to maximize the volume, blow drying it section by section. He then added even more oomph by curling each section with a large-barrel curling iron (use a medium-sized one if your hair is shorter than Julie's) and wrapped each curl into Velcro rollers upon finishing them.
"He added big Velcro rollers to get the massive waves," Julie recalls. "I learned that you have to really pin curl each after the curling iron to get it to stay that way."
Did she learn anything else? "Oh, and use lots of hairspray!" she giggles.
Most women have the prerogative of being able to change their hairstyles and hair color whenever they feel like it. For actresses (especially ones that are newer to the game), however, it's not that easy. Not only do they have agents (who signed them looking a certain way) to answer to, but there's also the matter of those costly headshots to consider, not to mention that it could be very risky to gamble it all away on a whim.
That was TotalBeauty.com reader Julie's problem. She's a 27-year-old actress and is beginning to get a foothold in the business but wanted to do something to put some oomph into her long, dark hairstyle -- without making too drastic of a change. Was it possible?
"My biggest hair bummer is the weight of this mop," she said on a recent Saturday morning at the Argyle Salon & Spa in West Hollywood, Calif. "Having so much of it just looks soooo drab."
Not for long. Julie was about to meet hair colorist extraordinaire, Alfredo Lewis. He's worked wonders on celebrities like Sandra Bullock and Holly Hunter. And on this day, a series of transformations for his newest client would soon be underway. See what Lewis and the rest of the Total Beauty makeover squad did to revamp Julie's hairstyle and makeup look (because no makeover is complete with out new makeup) without making her unrecognizable. You might just be able to steal her transformation secrets and make them your own.
