A few years ago I was tasked with doing a foreigner client in the salon. She wanted to be blonde and I felt that I could achieve it by just using bleach. The process took upwards of 5 hours and in the end, we did not achieve the results that we wanted. I also noticed that most of our hairdressers shied away from doing blonde hair. Of course there were a few Piandre stylists who had it figured out - Rose in Piandré Salcedo was an expert just from the exposure of being in the area as well as Fely in Piandré Greenbelt who was always requested by some American ladies.
In recent years however, we noticed that there were more caucasian ladies coming through our doors, and more Filipinas also wanting to have lighter hair.
In 2016, we took a Balayage class in New York with a group of senior stylists with Candy Shaw - the queen of Balayage. In 2017 we tapped Australian hairdressing superstars Jaye Edwards and Michael Kelly to come to Manila to give us Balayage classes and they taught us the art of lived-in color. It was during this time that half of our models were caucasian. They taught us to blend colors and how to achieve a sun-kissed look. In 2018, top Australian hairdressers Chantelle Cowcher and Johanna Hughes came to deepen our knowledge about balayage using our Spanish brand LAKMÉ. This last training has made a deep impact in our understanding and technique - it has also made our work more sure and more efficient.
Today, Amber Folkman, an American lady living in Manila for the last 7 years reveals Piandre as her top choice to get her blonde hair on point. I feel that this is a great validation not only of our blonding journey, but most importantly our commitment to education and improvement to our clients.
Check out Amber's take On being blonde in the Philippines : https://www.amommabroad.com/blog/being/blonde