Local Giveaway: Toka Salon Express Blowout [CLOSED]

Jul 24, 2012

Today, we have a great giveaway for CHS’s Washington, D.C. readers (don’t worry non-Washingtonians, I have a great giveaway for y’all next week).  And it’s all in the name of good hair.

Toka, consistently named one of the District’s best salons, is now offering an Express Blowout. Perfect for busy professionals, the blowout takes 20 minutes or less and costs just $40.  So if you need your locks looking perfect, but you don’t have an hour to spend in the chair, this blowout is made for you.

Last week, I joined Miss M and several dozen ladies at the Toka Salon in Georgetown to give the Express Blowout a try.  I was amazed how quickly Gazi finished my blowout, and when he was done people kept telling me how amazing my hair looked.  Definitely a confidence booster!

For this giveaway, I have two $20 gift certificates to pass on to two lucky readers that can be used at any one of the three Toka locations in the Metro-area (Georgetown, Penn Quarter or Cameron Station in Alexandria).  The closest one to the Hill is the Penn Quarter location at the top of the Archives Metro stop. 

To enter this giveaway, leave a comment detailing your worst hair mistake ever.  It can be a bad set of highlights, poorly applied extensions or a mullet (all of these I had, by the way–and Mom, if you say it was a bi-level cut, I will come unhinged, it was a mullet!).  Tell us your worst hair story, and you could win a gift certificate for $20 toward a new style, color or Express Blowout at Toka.  Giveaway closes Tuesday, good luck.

Style

share this post

Leave a Reply to Lexi Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  1. Amanda says:

    Remember those colorful hair wraps that used to be pretty popular? I cut one out of my hair once when I was about 8 – I had an inch of hair sticking up at the top of my head for months.

  2. CS says:

    Sun-in… enough said.

  3. Beth S says:

    There was a really unfortunate bright-blond highlights incident in high school that my friends lovingly referred to as “trailer trash chic.”

  4. Virginia says:

    Hands down, it was the bowl cut I got when I was younger. I went from having really long hair to a bob — and it looked terrible! Totally traumatized me until… well, I'm still traumatized and will never cut my hair that short again!

  5. Kate says:

    Ditto that. Worst mistake is definitely Sun-In. One summer I applied WAY too liberally, and my dark brown locks turned a vicious shade of orange.

  6. Shannon R. says:

    A bob cut. Never again! I don't think it was the stylist's fault, I think it just wasn't the style for me!

  7. Lori says:

    trying to cut my own bangs…

  8. Erica says:

    Had my hair chemically straightened – looked like a broom for 6 months. Nonstop ponytails were required.

  9. Em says:

    Bangs. I know they sound innocent enough, but when paired with braces, glasses, and a high school passion for very large silver hoop earrings, they were a terrible decision. That was a lot of hardware for one face.

  10. Jo says:

    When I was in college I thought it would be a great idea to dye my hair jet black with bleach blonde (nearly white!) highlights. It was very Cruella DeVille!!!!!

  11. EA says:

    I was bald until I was 2…my mother had to velcro bows to my head

  12. MIchelle says:

    I attempted to do a chic, grown up bob my freshman year of college. There must have been some severe miscommunication between myself and the stylist, and I wound up with something that can only be described as a reverse mullet. It took a full year to grow out to a semi-normal place. That was a bad, bad time.

  13. Christine says:

    My crimper got a lot of use during middle school….not cute.

  14. Katie says:

    Easily the worst hair cut I have had was when I got bangs…with my awful cowlick.

  15. EK says:

    Bangs…but lovingly curled each morning by my mother with a curling iron, and teased into an 80's-style poof on my forehead. Paired with two french braids, it was a look that said “your siblings will show these photos to future boyfriends for years to come.”

  16. danii says:

    my blonde ambition!! this brunette nearly bankrupted herself getting full highlights every 6 weeks. I was just out of college, working my first job, and all “hey, im awesome, I deserve this!” entry level salary + $220 highlights paid for via credit card = 10 mos of debt hell! NowI rock my natural hair color, but my years of going blonde has made the ends of my hair brassy- prompting me to either deal with the brass, or get it colored. My bf thinks its ridiculous that I pay to have my hair colored to the natural color in order to match my roots. On a Hill salary, this means I can afford it at tax return time, or when I go home to Ohio. wah wah.

    Lesson learned? While blondes do have more fun, paying for things on credit card that you cannot afford is not good!

  17. amandal says:

    My senior year of high school, I thought it would be a great idea to try a short floppy hair cut. Terrible idea. Never again will I do short hair.

  18. TWG says:

    When I was a young child I had (sometimes) beautiful long brown hair-however it was usually a tangled mess. I refused to let my mother brush out the knots one morning and I vividly remember her standing up, throwing all my bows/barrettes/hair ties into the garbage can and saying “fine, we're cutting it all off.” And that's exactly what happened. I'm not talking bob, bowl cut or anything of the like-I'm talking about an actual men's hairstyle (think high and tight, but not as severe) which I rocked for about a year until it started to grow out a little.

  19. Amanda says:

    I attempted to dye my naturally very light blonde hair a golden brown color. My English/ Irish/ Scottish heritage kicked in and my hair came out redder than Donna from that 70s show. Absolutely terrible–some girls can pull off the red, but I am not one of those girls!

  20. Elizabeth says:

    I went to a very nice Salon in my High School days to get highlights when I was still pretty hesitant about dying my hair. The woman gave me the natural look I asked for in the back, but I was left with legitimate skunk stripes in the front! Terrible thing to happen the day before you have to give an announcement in front of the entire school!

  21. CH says:

    I cut my own bangs when I was five, two days before my first-ever school picture day. They were about a half-inch long by the time my mom was able to get them all evened out. We laugh about it now 🙂

  22. Hae says:

    i think you can get away with having bad hair during your adolescent years, but my hair catastrophe happened at age 27. i got a korean digital perm to add body to my hair with voluminous beach-style waves. needless to say, beach-style waves never happened. the result was more like a perm from the late 80s… with added crunch as a bonus takeaway. it took me almost a year for my hair to get over the trauma.

  23. e says:

    Cutting out a wad of gum from the top of my head in third grade. I cut as close to my scalp as I could, which meant that the grow-out period took a good year. I had a tuft of hair sticking straight up that my mom would try to gel down for me. My entire family referred to me as “pokey” and my gymnastics coach consistently called me out on my chopped hair =(

  24. MG says:

    I have curly AND frizzy hair–and for the first ten years of my life, my mom would make me endure a perm. In most of my elementary school photos, my hair is in the middle of the photo, with me on the side. Needless to say, I wear my hair straight now!

  25. Melissa says:

    My hair started to go from straight to wavy and poufy when I was in 5th grade. My mom suggested short layers. I looked like a very petite, unwrinkled 65-year-old for a few months…

  26. Kitty B says:

    Sun-in? Check. Ombre before it was hip, but in a decidedly cringe-worthy manner.
    Bowl cut. Check. That was forced upon my 8 year-old self. “My, you have a darling little boy” will forever be etched in my brain.
    Then there was the time my stylist decided to turn the whitest white girl in Atlanta into a bleached platinum blonde. That led to one bottle of bourbon and a 6-hour marathon session to repair the damage.
    However, the worst – by far – was the post-freshman-15, in-the-mood-for-a-change perm from J.C. Penney – yes, you read that right. I looked like I had attached myself to an electrical outlet. It was truly awful.

  27. Michal says:

    Self-done hair wraps with beads from the 90s. Bad when others do them, worse when you do them yourself

  28. caitlin says:

    On the last day of high school, I cut my long, flowing locks to a bob. That was a great decision actually. The bad one was when I tried to put hot rollers in it using all the products/heat I needed when I had long hair. Since my hair no longer had any weight on it, the hot rollers created orphan Annie curls instead of the long soft curls I wanted!

  29. My biggest hair mistakes are absolutely the perm my mother decided to give me in kindergarten to make me look like Shirley Temple (I actually looked like a 92 year old granny) or the time I decided to take my naturally dark brown hair and bleach it platinum. I paid a lot of money (and ruined the health of my hair) to look like trailer trash. So glad those days are behind me!

  30. Kathryn says:

    In September I finally had to get my color done after my old stylist moved to Arizona. The woman he recommended took highlights to mean blonde streaks in a pattern appropriate for a member of the cast of any Real Housewives, while I meant lighter red bits buried throughout reminiscent of those I already had. I looked like I belonged in a mall in the 90s. My hair is just recovering.

  31. Christine says:

    I cut my own bangs with Fisker scissors.

  32. RN says:

    I once thought it would be a good idea to attempt to cut bangs before a party in college. I had flat ironed my very curly hair and they turned out pretty well… until I showered.

    As soon as the curls came back I had what I can only describe as a pom pom sticking straight out of my hairline. Not cute. Took years to grow out. To this day stylists ask me “so what's going on with these shorter pieces in the front?” So embarrassing.

  33. Rose says:

    Not quite sure if it was the sun-in (and subsequent growing out of the sun-in….thanks, Mom, for making me learn that lesson the hard way or the bowl cut with teeny-tiny bangs.

  34. Mo says:

    My hair is very curly and thick. I have a very vivid memory from first grade when my mom took me to get a hair cut for my school pictures. The poor hairdresser did not know what to do with my hair and ended up cutting it into a strange boxy 'fro. To add insult to injury, I had also just lost my two front teeth. Needless to say, you won't find any of my first grade school pictures in my mom's house.

  35. Megan says:

    Oh man, I have several. The corn rows I got on family vacations in the Caribbean when I was a kid – and the ensuing frizzy 'fro I had when I eventually took the braids out. The ill-advised blonde highlights when I was in middle school that turned my pretty brunette hair into brassy straw. That awful comb-through temporary pink hair dye that was popular when I was 13 and just entering my “punk” phase. That one time during freshman year of college when I tried to trim my split ends myself and ended up cutting off an entire chunk of my hair. Fortunately, I've had a good track record since then – knock on wood…

  36. Shannon B. says:

    I have curly auburn hair – I had a haircut to look like the gymnast Mary Lou Retton circa 1984. Needless to say it did not work well.

  37. Jess says:

    From third through sixth grade I — voluntarily — had a bowl cut. I thought I was super-chic and fashionable in my little podunk Pennsylvania town, and that I just knew what was up. It wasn't until my family went skiing and a little boy bumped into me at the bottom of the slope, and was commanded by his mother to “Say sorry to the nice boy,” that I realized just how wrong I was. I started growing my hair tout suite.

  38. Sarah517 says:

    I have very thick and curly hair that for some reason also varies in type of curl and texture. In 6th grade, I let my cousin talk me into getting bangs, thinking they would look fabulous, exactly like many of my classmate's who had perfect bangs on their stick-straight hair. Not exactly the case. Not only did the oil from my hair cause my forehead to remain in the midst of a steady breakout for the entire six-month period I sported this hair fashion faux-paux, I also tried to skip the blow-drying and just style my curly hair like I usually did, resulting in these awful spirals just dangling over my forehead. Never again have I attempted bangs. No side bangs, no partial-half-kind-of-there-wispy-bangs, nothing. Traumatized.

  39. IRMcK says:

    My stylist was way more interested in watching the Royal Wedding (time delayed!) on the tv than on cutting my layers properly. I definitely ended up with mullet-esque hair for a while, but as it grew, it definitely turned into the Rachel. I had been thinking about changing salons for a while, but that really was the last straw.

  40. Lindsey says:

    I convinced my parents to let me get a perm, but only on my bangs. What was I thinking!?

  41. LP says:

    Oh, I have quite a few. The worst was by far self inflicted-

    At our school, we had to give speeches in the 9th grade to the student body. The day of my speech, my hair was particularly frizzy. Instead of dealing with it, I decided to pull all of the frizz to the front of my head and cut it off with scissors. This left about a 1/2″ buzz cut that grew out over the next year. There are no remaining pictures of me from the year 2000.

    Lesson learned!

  42. Heidi says:

    My biggest hair mistake was cutting my curly hair really short in the 6th grade. I had a fro for months afterward and couldn't stop crying about how bad it looked. =)

  43. Katie says:

    I decided to get a trim on my already-short hair just before 7th grade. Unfortunately, the stylist cut off way too much hair and I ended up with a blunt haircut so short that it barely went past my ears. To make things worse, my hair naturally flips outwards, so I didn't even get a cute bob shape. I'm always painfully reminded of that haircut whenever I look back at the school picture from that year, which happened to be taken only a couple of weeks later.

  44. Lynn says:

    Home perm at age 10! Oh, god, the nightmares…

  45. strin012 says:

    late '80s/early '90s bangs – the top was rolled back, the bottom rolled forward. Looked like my bangs would jump off my forehead and eat you alive.

  46. Kelsey says:

    Bowl cut. Thanks, Mom, photos of my life years three through seven will never again see the light of day.

  47. cs says:

    super curly ringlets cut into a nose-length bob when i was seven…the worst.

  48. KateW says:

    From age 8 to age 10, my hair was literally shaped like a triangle – complete with frizzy bangs. I have thick, wavy hair, and my straight/fine-haired mother had no concept of layers or frizz control. My hair eclipsed my siblings in family photos!

  49. RosaLovesDC says:

    My worst hair mistake wasn't entirely my fault, Dad was 50% responsible (yes the other 50% was all me because I listened to him).
    I was a teenager and he decided to take my sister and I to get some haircuts. He was trying to be the cool dad. While my sister got a cute cut, I didn't. You see, I always had really long hair so dad thought “why don't you go short this time?”. Well, I did, and it was awful. Did I mention I have extremely curly hair? Well, it was basically that episode of Felicity but obviously way before the TV show even aired. While it looked cute for about a day, my crazy curls started to grow and get really wild so I ended up looking like Little Orphan Annie (did I mentioned my hair was red when I was younger?). Oh yes, to this date I still have nightmares about that haircut. Dad never again took me to get a haircut after that ordeal.

  50. Kara says:

    A perm in middle school on barely past chin length hair…it was bad. I blame my mother.

  51. Aly says:

    I had the bowl cut when I was about nine, accompanied by pre-braces buck teeth and a cut on my face from falling on the diving board. I remember one trip to Disney World when I wore a baseball cap over my bowl cut and John Lennon sunglasses that were tinted blue and crooked on my face. Heeeeeeeeeey Mickey!

  52. Stephanie says:

    I had super thick bangs in 5th grade that were frizzy and my mom would trim them really short… it was traumatizing

  53. Megan says:

    during a high school summer vacation, my friends and i went to the beach for a week. i came back with cornrows. i am still attempting to track down and destory every picture of myself from that june!

  54. Katie says:

    I let my mom cut my bangs the day before picture day in eighth grade. My bangs went from too long (about nose length) to an inch long.
    Worst. Mistake. Ever. I have no idea why I let her do it since I had been cutting my own bangs for a while before that!

  55. Elyse G. says:

    When I was little my mom always cut my bangs slightly too short. I looked ridiculous.

  56. Maggie says:

    I got a keratin treatment last year which has totally ruined my hair ever since. It isn't that it was a bad product or a bad styling job it's just that now, a year later, my hair hasn't fully recovered its big curls and is now is just limp. I didn't know how much I'd miss by big frizz until it was gone! Definitely didn't see that coming.

  57. Samantha says:

    When I was four I convinced my brother to play “hair stylist” with me and we chopped off a decent portion of my long blonde hair. Needless to say, my mother was not pleased.

  58. Meg says:

    So not necessarily a hair cut, but how about my current mop of curly hair and how it looks during a DC summer? There are no words.

  59. Sally says:

    Where do I start? A bowl cut for my round face, the time I dyed my blond hair dishwater brown, letting my grandmother perm my hair (to include my bangs). These are probably the worst offenses, but only a few of many mistakes.

  60. Kelly says:

    In highschool, I let my best friend give me bangs. Enough said.

  61. DH says:

    In college I was poor, so I got my hair cut about once a year. One time when it grew very long and was due for a cut, I decided to donate it. Locks of Love lists salons that will give you a free haircut if you donate your hair – perfect! I selected a really nice place in town, made an appointment, and showed up with a picture of what I wanted my new hairdo to look like. I made a point of explaining to the stylist that I never get my hair cut and I'm in college, so I need something low-low-maintenance and that grows out well without needing to be cut. Well… I got neither of these things. That short haircut was so atrocious, I have worn my hair long ever since. At least someone with cancer benefitted from my year of horrible pictures!

  62. BN says:

    In an effort to reduce frizz, I used to flatten my hair and add product until it looked like it was plastered to my scalp. Oh, high school…

  63. M says:

    It was 2 days before I started my first professional job out of college and I went to get my haircut to look nice for the big day. At the time, my hair fell just above my shoulders and I told the woman I wanted it cut a little shorter (half an inch to an inch) and to layer it accordingly. By the time all was said and styled, she had cut my hair to ear- length and the layers in the back made it look even shorter. It was so short and looked horrible on me and there was nothing i could do to fix it. On my first day of work I had to get my picture taken for my badge, so everyday now I have a constant reminder of that awful haircut!

  64. Katie says:

    Right after Freshman year of college, I needed a quick, fresh haircut before taking on the summer.

    I made two BIG mistakes: 1) I made a last minute appointment with a stylist I didn't know and 2) I had a MASSIVE fight with my mom on the way to the salon, so I was completely distracted the entire appointment and paid very little attention to what was happening to my hair

    I don't remember what I asked for, but I ended up with an emo kid/soccer mom haircut full of horrifying, uneven layers and short, hideous bangs.

  65. Stefanie R. says:

    Blonde highlights. As a natural brunette, the thick blonde stripes in my hair were not a good look.

  66. Sarah says:

    In high school when I went through my “punk phase” I had short “choppy” hair. In reality this meant hair up to my chin with no consistent length and layers as short as 3 inches!

  67. Meredith says:

    woof, my worst hair mistake was a couple years ago incorrectly trying to rock a “bump it” – It looked terrible and I have way too many pics on facebook to prove it.

  68. SS says:

    I jumped on board with the whole side swiped bangs – with baby fine hair and a cowlick. Add in lack of patience and they ended up clipped up the majority of the time.

  69. Jenn says:

    I got a shaggy bob when I was in middle school that was disastrous because I failed to realize that my hair flips out naturally and was way thicker than the model's hair in the photo I brought to the stylist. I looked like Mark Hamill. I came home from the salon in tears, while my mom had an intense migraine, and my dad was barely holding it together (he just took two pre-teen girls to a hair salon). When I continued to complain about my hair, he finally just snapped “Your hair is so ****-ing cute, so shut up about it!” So yeah, that was referred to as my “****-ing cute” hairstyle for ages.

  70. Meghan says:

    When I was going into 7th grade (transitioning from middle school to the big high school), I decided to donate my hair to Locks of Love. Well, the “stylist” who was going to do the cut discovered my hair was a little too short when the pony tail was at the back of my head. Rather than send me away, she put the pony tail on top of my head and cut straight across, then proceeded to try and cut out all my little cowlicks. Needless to say, I had something akin to a buzzcut on my first day of school.

  71. E says:

    Recently, I got a haircut where the stylist had absolutely no idea how to cut my layers. I have thin curly hair and her layers gave me a triangle head – the exact opposite of what I wanted! Luckily I was able to get it fixed, it was just two inches shorter than I wanted.

    Either that or the cornrolls I got in Jamaica on a family vacation in middle school. I mean, they were in on the resort we were at….

  72. Heather says:

    ages 3-7 my mom forced me to have a pageboy haircut. any hairstyle with “boy” in the name should tell you it's not a hairstyle for girls!

  73. Kristen says:

    The day before my Holy Communion I decided to cut my own bangs. What's even worse is that my mother had been out of the country for 6 weeks, and flying in specifically for the special day. My dad spent considerable amount of energy – ie: making sure all the permanent marker was scrubbed from various limbs – getting me ready so he could show his wife he wasn't ill-equipped to raise us heathens. In the matter of seconds I destroyed that illusion.

  74. SC2 says:

    (not entering but wanted to comment)

    Wow.. all these horror hair stories! They're reminding me of the time when I was in my early teens and decided to cut my hair short to chin length. My mom obsessed over the cut and SHE was the one who decided the look – it made me look like a boy for the next couple of years. The worst thing was, shortly after that haircut, I had to replace my passport for the first time as an adult, which meant that for the next 10 years, my passport picture was me with that ugly haircut. Thankfully the 10 years are up this year and I will have a passport picture that actually LOOKS female.

  75. Liz says:

    Going to a “teaching” salon and ending up with a mullet. I guess they taught me why this was a bad idea!

  76. lesley says:

    A lot of Sun-In which took my medium dark brown hair to brassy blonde. I cringe at the pictures!

  77. K says:

    Having my hair chemically straightened! I was in middle school and thought it would solve all of my puffy-haired woes, but it failed and I sat in the bathroom and cried at the fact that I still had to blow dry my hair straight. (You can tell I'm not much of a risk taker when it comes to my hair)

  78. KC says:

    The Unicorn – I have an awesome (kidding) widows peak that i decided to SHAVE in 8th grade – so when it grew back in, sticking straight out from the front of my head, i looked like a unicorn….

  79. Lauren says:

    To choose the worst, I would have to roll the dice between:

    Deciding I was going to trim my bangs myself (at 12, so old enough to know better). While wet. And I have very curly hair. My bangs were literally 2 inches long by the time I was done.

    Choosing to copy my mom's 80s styled hair until high school. Teasing included.

    Cutting off my long layered hair and doing a short bob about ear length. I looked like a mushroom or a part of the male anatomy.

  80. XF says:

    In my ill-fated attempt to be thrifty, I went to one of those teaching schools for a $30 color job. I got jet black hair instead of warm chestnut. I looked sick for months.

  81. Nancy says:

    When I was in the 9th grade I thought it would be a good idea to cut my own bangs. Meaning, I had all one length hair, and created bangs from scratch. Needless to say, it was a disaster — too thick, uneven, started way too far back on my scalp. I then had to get my long hair cut into a bob to speed up the growing out process. Sigh.

  82. Bernie says:

    A home perm. For reference, I am Asian. Worst idea ever (thanks Mom) as I went around for six months looking like I had a finger in an active outlet. Also, this was in middle school…it didn't help matters!

  83. E says:

    When I was in college I desperately needed my ends trimmed, so I went to the hair academy. I should've realized it was going to turn out horribly when I had to tell the lady cutting my hair she should probably brush it from the pony tail she had just taken it out of. She cut into my and created a pseudo mullet on the right side of my head.

  84. Abby says:

    My biggest hair mistake was accidentally spending $175 on a haircut. Yes, $175 ACCIDENTALLY. I was in desperate need of a haircut and I wandered into the first salon I could find. I figured it couldn't be that much and let the guy do his job. I must say, it was the best haircut I've ever had in my life…except for the fact that he talked me into getting full bangs. That wasn't too good…Anyway, when all was said and done I went to pay and the man said, “Alright, that will be $175.” I think my eyes bugged out of my head. So there I was, stuck with full bangs that I didn't really want and a $175 charge on my parent's credit card that I was going to have to explain. My parents won't let me live that mistake down to this day.

  85. Meredith says:

    I had HUGE bangs that started at the middle of my head and extended forward past my eyebrows until the age of 11. At the time, they were my pride and joy but, looking back, it was easily the worst hair style known to mankind.

  86. K says:

    One of my friends in high school always had the best hair, so I figured she could give me a good cut. This is how I learned the difference between African American and Caucasian hair – while my friend's layered hair led to all sorts of cool updos, my newly unevenly layered hair stuck out in all directions and looked horrendous. There were tears, but we remained friends.

    Thankfully, I subsequently learned how to use a curling iron and straightener to hide my layers

  87. LAG says:

    The standard elementary school bangs I had across my forehead… except somehow the hair stylists I visited managed to ignore the fact that I have a weird cowlick in the front of my hair, and so I pranced around with these crazy wonky bangs for years.

  88. Sunshine says:

    one reader already posted sun… well my worst decision is 'Sun-In' – essentially bleach in a bottle: ( hide it from your teenager!

  89. CEM says:

    Worst mistake ever was dying my hair red, then not doing the upkeep. I was a lazy college student, but when I look at photos… yikes!

  90. Amanda K says:

    I went to a styling school and asked for layers that were shorter on the underside and longer on top. The student must not have understood what I meant by layers because I ended up with my hair practically in a buzzcut on the base of my head with a few long locks from my part. I looked like a heavy metal rocker!

  91. E says:

    Oh you know, just a teased and crimped hair “scrunchie” from The Icing circa 7th grade. They called me Big Red Giant and I wore it on TOP of my head.

  92. Lizzie says:

    When I was in high school, I used “Sun-In.” I followed the instructions on the bottle and it said for more intense highlights, to blow dry your hair instead of laying out in the sun. So I applied the dye and blow-dryed my hair. Nothing happened. I waited and then re-applied the dye and blow-dryed, and nothing happened. I repeated this about four times, until the “Sun-In” bottle was empty. I went to bed and woke up the next morning and my entire head of hair was BRONZE. Since I have naturally dark brown hair, the bronze looked absolutely hideous with my dark brown eye brows. My mom made me wait until my hair grew out, so that I would learn my lesson. Let's just say my school picture from that year is enough to keep me away from “Sun-In” forever.

  93. Shannon says:

    Thinking that shaving the bottom portion of my hair would help keep me “cooler” in the summer. My only defense is that I was 10. I still cringe when I think about that decision.

  94. Tina says:

    I am in dire need of a haircut!!

    My senior year of high school, I was bored of my long hair and decided to take the plunge and cut it off! My hair was on the verge of a pixie hairstyle…went to school and everyone was blown away. That wasn't the worst part, it grew out just a bit, and became the “very-awkward-length” for years! It just didn't look right on me. I just graduated college and my hair FINALLY grew out long again…though I am getting bored of long hair again…but lesson learned, verge of pixie hair is not a good idea for me!

  95. Kellyl says:

    Absolutely the two year phase where I still brushed my hair and treated it as if was straight, refusing to acknowledge it had become curly. I walked around with a bushy untamed head of hair for quite awhile before discovering anti-frizz products and the importance of using a comb while it was still wet! I attempt to embrace the curls now.

  96. CDH says:

    Repeatedly listening to stylists' suggestions that I get layers.

  97. AK says:

    It's a close tie: When I first moved to DC a few years ago I went into a salon and asked the hairstylist to give me a little trim, just enough to clean up my layers. She started cutting and then informed me that she was “A little OCD, so she was just going to keep cutting until it was perfect”. 3 hours of cutting (and of me panicking) later, rather than the shoulder length hair I wanted, I had a bob. It took me ages to grow it out (although it did get me lots of compliments and made for an interesting story when I responded with “Thanks, it was an accident…”)

    The only thing that might top it was when I studied abroad in college I went to the most affordable, but still reputable salon I could find and asked to get my usual highlights, just subtly lighter than my natural color. I walked out of there looking like I'd washed my hair in bleach. Even my guy friends, usually oblivious to my hair coloring, noticed the change from across the room in a dimly lit bar. I looked ridiculous for about 6 weeks until they finally faded.

  98. T says:

    Definitely a too-short cut in middle school. I looked like a boy for a good 2 months.

  99. Lindsay says:

    my worst hair disaster… not a cut or color… rather, i did nothing for years…. in high school and freshman year of college i was “that girl”. you know, the one with creepily long hair WWAAAYYY down past my back. never again.

  100. Melissa says:

    I got highlights, hoping to maintain the light blonde color I was born with after it darkened as I grew up. I asked the colorist for natural-looking color that mimicked what I had as a teenager. I ended up with skunk stripes of bleach blonde, in tears at the salon, wishing I had listened to my mother's advice never to dye my hair.

  101. Rachel says:

    So many blonde highlights done by the cap that I turned fully into a blonde!

  102. APW says:

    I once asked a new stylist to “clean the ends up.” Little did I know I was asking her to basically cut all my hair off, and longer in the front than the back. Took me forever to grow it out.

  103. Margaret says:

    I, being fascinated by both scissors and hair in 3rd grade, decided to self trim my bangs resulting in a fringe of hair sticking straight out of my forehead for a good 2 weeks.

  104. C says:

    Two mistakes in one: trying out a new salon and wanting to add very loose waves to my already semi-wavy hair (basically tried to enhance it). The girl gave me a BAD 80s style perm and when I complained and returned a few days later to see the owner, he had the nerve to tell me what I wanted wasn't possible and I would have been better off just curling my hair everyday – that would have been helpful advice a week earlier.

  105. SLL says:

    I have two traumatic hair stories. The first bad style phase happened in late elementary through middle school. You might describe it as a pixie cut if you were feeling kind; however, I looked exactly like a little boy and was often mistaken for such. Once it started to grow, the mistake was compounded by adding a perm, making me appear rather like a poodle. And for the second story, well, let's just say you should never have your bangs cut the night before school photos… laser background included.

  106. EBT says:

    Too many to count… letting my mom highlight my hair at home in 8th grade (ended up with what looked like leopard spots), TONS of hair wraps in college (like, way too old for that kind of thing), many adventures in cutting my own hair (in 8th grade, in college, and then like 3 weeks ago) and an epic fire engine red dye job that lasted from age 13 to age 20. To name a few.

  107. Lara says:

    My mom treated me to a trip to “the best colorist in all of Oklahoma” in my hometown last Christmas. I came out with platinum and black stripes.

  108. S says:

    The pudding bowl haircut I rocked until 5th grade!

  109. L says:

    I was the least rebellious teenaged rebel ever, and I died a single inch-wide strip of my hair (which was dark brown) dark purple in the ninth grade. It was impossible to tell that it was purple — it just looked like one very specific section of my hair was greasier than the rest. It was supposed to wash out in eight shampoos, and I couldn't cut the end of it off until my freshman year of college.

  110. Morgan says:

    Sponge rollers for Middle School cheerleading. Yikes. Topped off with an obnoxiously large bow, of course.

  111. CR says:

    I had a college roommate try to dye away my highlights, and the brown color came out fire engine red. After having to live with it for a few weeks, I finally got to a salon and they had to dye it jet black to get rid of the red color. I looked like a punk until it grew out.

  112. aec says:

    I had a misunderstanding with my stylist who cut my hair three inches shorter than it should have been (it was already short to begin with). I was 13 at the time, and I couldn't even wait until I got to the car to cry. I started bawling in the chair in front of that poor woman. I didn't get my hair cut again for 5 years.

  113. Cara says:

    I decided to try highlights but headed home to PA for the cheaper prices…and ended up with skunk streaks in my bangs and right above my ears. I was unaware of the existence of toner at the time…and clearly so was the colorist.

  114. alex says:

    A bowl cut as a young girl. People asked who the new boy on the school bus was. I will never have short hair again!

  115. VH says:

    I went in to get a blowout before my senior pictures were taken, and there was a hiccup in communication with the woman, who thought I wanted my hair “styled.” When I said I wanted it slightly curled under at the ends, she heard “curls” and gave me pin curls that started at my ears. I was 17 and too shy to say anything so just let her go about her business and left looking like a poodle. Needless to say I rescheduled my senior pictures and just did my hair myself the next time.

  116. JM says:

    I have really thick, curly, frizzy hair. my mom has straight hair so she never really understood how to work with my hair. in 4th grade she cut it into a bob and also gave me bangs. i looked like a lion. and it was too short to put into a ponytail to hide it. so i had to wear all kinds of headbands and clips to keep the bangs in remission. and she tried to put the bob up in a banana clip! i was not having that. luckily, my hair grows extremely quickly.

  117. Samantha says:

    I cute my bangs when I was 11. The growing out process over the following weeks was extremely painful (for the ego).

  118. Natalie says:

    Trimming my own bangs–and making them way too short. The last time I did this was right before a wedding…I cringe every time I see one of the pictures pop up somewhere.

  119. Paige says:

    worst.bowl.cut.ever.

    they called me “mushroom head.”

  120. p says:

    highschool. bangs. curled to great heights with a large-barreled curling iron. hairsprayed to kingdom come – not even hurricane-force winds would have moved them.
    (add braces, freckles, dark allergy-induced under-eye circles… and you have me at 16. not my best year.)

  121. Katie says:

    Body wave in the 7th grade!

  122. DB says:

    A perm. But not in the 80s, when everyone else had permed hair and we were all in it together. This was in 2003. My boyfriend's mother was a (self-proclaimed) stylist and convinced me my hair was “dull” and needed some texture. One horrible uneven perm job later and I was in permanent ponytail mode until it grew out.

  123. B says:

    My stylist misread the formula for my color- usually a coppery/strawberry red- and instead used the Aveda “intense color” on my hair. It was an intense, bright fire engine red that looked almost neon. I started bawling in the salonchair. She tried to tone it out, but nothing helped. I had to wash my hair with Dawn soap for 3 days until she could try to retone it again.

    Lesson learned… I always make sure my stylist gives me the exact formula for my haircolor so that won't happen again.

  124. Cynthia says:

    I thought it would be cool in the 90s to get an undercut, where you shave your head from the nape of your neck to the middle of your head. My parents REFUSED to let me do it, so I took matters into my own hands (literally) and shaved it myself (with the help of a friend.)

    I had long hair at the time, which hid the undercut for a while. When my hair was down, I looked normal. When I was out with friends, I put my hair in a ponytail to show off the undercut. In reality, I looked like Frankenhair.

    Not my finest moment, especially when I started growing out the frankenhair.

  125. Mary says:

    Thinking that growing my hair as long as I could was a good look. Just found my 8th grade graduation picture: the stringy hair down my back paired with the conservative white dress made me look like a sister wife.

  126. CMB says:

    About six months ago, finally took the plunge and chopped off my hair, which actually turned out great. I went to my usual stylist in NYC (I live in DC) for the first cut but six weeks later, I couldn't get to NYC for a trim, and it was driving me crazy, so I went to Bubbles. I don't know why I thought that was a good idea, but I walked out with the worst hair cut of my life. It looked like she randomly chopped off sections of my hair. Still growing it out…

  127. Bethany says:

    I got a perm when I was 8 years old. My mom thought it would add body to my fine hair. It was curly, alright! But so tightly wound, that when it started to grow out I'd have stick straight hair and then boom, hit a line of bouncy tight curls! It looked awful!

  128. Maria says:

    Bad highlights… BAD.

  129. Emily says:

    a pixie cut…needless to say it did not flatter my face shape and was not able to fix it easily

  130. Anne says:

    My hair started to turn wavy/curly right after I went through puberty; however, I did not learn how to gel it until I was in 9th grade. My middle school years were full of lots of frizz.

  131. aliyblue says:

    Bettie Page bangs. Doesn't work as well on blondes!

  132. Kate says:

    Telling the stylist that I wanted shoulder length hair, and him deciding that I needed it shorter – like to my ears short. Worst style ever.

  133. MM says:

    Not too terrible, since it wasn't permanant, but I definitly went a little crazy with some spray on purple hair dye in high school.

  134. joyce says:

    mine was actually a bad hair year, not a day. when my oldest child was born, “someone” convinced me i needed a short haircut. mistake. it was a cute, behind the ear bob. but, i am neither cute nor made for short hair. growing it out was agonizing but i learned to never go for the short haircut because someone else thought it was a good idea, ever again.

  135. Kacy says:

    Half inch long bangs the day before school pictures in grade school. Still traumatized.

  136. Maggie says:

    Three words: Dorm Room Highlights.

  137. Beth says:

    After a bad breakup, I decided to get bright blond highlights in my chestnut brown locks. Instead of the bleaching effect I desired, they turned neon orange. To add insult to injury, the stylist left bleed marks all over my part where the foils touched, giving me a spotted leopard look. When I returned to get it fixed up, she insisted on refoiling the whole thing, turning my orange into vomit-esque chartreuse. It took 4 redying sessions (at a different, legit salon) to get my hair back to somewhat normal brown.

  138. CD says:

    pebbles…my nickname for all of second grade. I decided on picture day to put a comb in my hair like pebbles and her bone. Needless to say, the comb got stuck. And I had to live with half my front hair cut out for a whole year. A mullet would have been a dream compared do this toilet bowl do. Whole in the middle and a ring of hair all the way around. Luckily I think all of the pictures were burnt… either that or my parents have them all hidden in a drawer for black mail

  139. Jan S. says:

    sun in. with dark brown hair.

  140. Beth says:

    I was in desperate need of what should have been an easy, quick partial highlight. After missing my hair appointment at my salon (thank you late night votes!) and the fact that the next available apt was not for another 3 weeks, I decided to try the hair salon in Cannon. There was a big mistake made when the girl was mixing the highlighting cream because what should have been blonde highlights turned out blue. Bright royal blue. Long story short, the girl was fired and I got to know the owner well after many, many, many free corrective and conditioning treatments.

  141. Suzanne says:

    My mom once trimmed my bangs at home and cut them way too short.

  142. Liz says:

    Super short mom haircut when I was in 8th grade and going through an awkward phase…the fact that my hair is very curly did not help the situation

  143. Leah S. says:

    Giving myself bangs…in sixth grade. You know the story: cut them uneven have to shorten up, another uneven cut and the length just keeps on slipping away. I ended up with roughly a quarter inch of 'bangs' left. As I sheepishly walked to the bus stop the next morning (in a LongSleeve soccer tourney t-shirt no less)…waiting the jokes to fly I got one simply comment….”Did you know today was picture day?”

    No, no I did not.

  144. Ak says:

    I got blunt, straight across bangs. All the hipsters were rocking them my junior year of college and i wanted to do the same. Bad idea. With a small face and chubby cheeks I instantly looked liked I had gained 20 pounds. They took ages to grow out and I learned my lesson!

  145. AVV says:

    While I am a life-long fan of the pixie cut, one summer I took “as short as possible” way past cute/gamine to you-look-like-a-guy-from-the-back short. Any time the stylist has to buzz the back of your neck, you know things have gone wrong.

  146. AMac says:

    I'm a Greek girl with an olive complexion and thick dark brown hair (with thick dark brown eye brows to match) and I got highlights. Highlight! Worst mistake ever. I looked absurd.

  147. Ngoc Janjua says:

    In high school, my bangs were permed.

  148. Binna says:

    Oh my goodness. I went through some sort of strange gangster phase in highschool and got cornrows. Worst mistake ever and I'm embarrassed to even admit I did that, haha. Please note, cornrows DO NOT WORK and/or suit Asians and Asian hair. Tried to shampoo it the next day because my hair is the oily type and I couldn't take it anymore. Ended up with baby hairs fuzzing out of the cornrows and somehow kept that up for 2 more days before I gave up. Never, ever again.

  149. Sarah says:

    I decided to dye my hair myself to save some money since I recently left the Hill to stay home with my son…bad idea. My hair is now a brassy, orange-y blonde, and I'm so embarrassed to go to my regular hair dresser (or any other hair dresser for that matter) that I'm just living with it until it either grows out, or I break down and have it fixed by a professional.

  150. M says:

    When I first moved to DC after college I decided to brighten my hair for the spring/summer, but didn't have $200 to shell out for a legit color/cut. So i decided to go with the DIY method. While I was letting the color set, I started in on my split ends. Before I knew it, not only did I have an orange head of hair, but one side was about 4″ shorter than the other because I wasn't convinced I'd “gotten everything” and kept snipping…whoops.

  151. JS says:

    I decided to try cropped bangs right before I started a new school. HUGE mistake…

  152. JS says:

    I decided to try cropped bangs right before I started a new school. HUGE mistake…

  153. Sara says:

    My “Christmas” hair, done every Christmas for about 8 years – my bowl-shaped hair was put into these GOD-AWFUL curls that stuck out about 6 inches off my head. Not a great look. Why, Mom, why?

    And don't get me started on my “Easter” hair.

  154. Krista says:

    heavy usage of crimpers and bows.

  155. Lexi says:

    I tried bangs in 8th grade…it was not a good look for me…my hair is way too thick and floofy to support bangs!

  156. Molly says:

    Freshman year of college I used our “fall break” as an opportunity to dye my hair fire engine red. It was a disasterous mistake and I still get teased for it!

  157. Michelle says:

    mullet and I have curly hair….oh and did I mention i live in DC where the humidity is the worst?

  158. ELS says:

    At camp one year, when I was 14, my friend begged me to let her cut my hair. “Just a trim! It will be fun!” she said. I gave in (it sounded so fabulously “parent trap” to me) and plunked myself down in a chair. Armed with a paddle brush and safety scissors, she went to work. With all 8 of our cabin mates watching and talking, I didn't really think about what was going on until I heard “uh oh….”

    “WHAT?!” I responded, slightly hysterically. “Nothing, nothing,” she hastily replied. “I just need to even it out a little….”

    When she finally let me look in the mirror I realized that she cut off 4 AND A HALF INCHES of my hair. Unevenly. I cried about it for about a day and then got over it, but needless to say it was an interesting experience….

  159. Sarah D says:

    After a particularly bad day in high school, I drove straight to HAIR CUTTERY and asked the woman for a perm and highlights (new me, new hair, new life, or something like that). It came out almost orange, and frizzy like Skeeter in The Help, and I was so happy for something different that I marched into my house with pride. When my mom saw me, she burst into tears, and my dad laughed so hard that he cried as well (I cried shortly thereafter, and bought a box of Revlon golden brown hair dye, beginning a slippery slope into the world of fixing my stupid mistake).

  160. HM says:

    Lowlights. I wanted to add some dimension to my light blonde hair and the result was black streaks. From a distance, my hair looked grey..

  161. ECD says:

    In college – one of the girls who worked at the restaurant with me was in beauty school and convinced me to come down and let her give me a hair cut. mistake

    I have always been conservative with my hair. I've always worn it varying degrees of “long,” with layers for most of my life. I can't fully describe what she did to it – it was an above the shoulder do with layers that did NOT fall right. There was a piece in the back that just stuck out. I looked like a soccer mom. Needless to say – I wore a ponytail and lots of bobby pins for a good while.

  162. AM says:

    When I was 14, I traveled to a remote city in China with my parents. There was a salon across the street from where we were staying, and I decided it would be a great idea to get my hair dyed blonde (I have medium-dark brown hair). I went across the street and tried to communicate to the stylist, who spoke no English and had never met or styled the hair of an American, what I wanted. My parents were pretty protective about my hair, so I didn't tell them what I was doing. I thought that it would look so great that they wouldn't care when they saw the finished product. I ended up with purple hair.

  163. Claire says:

    I have curly hair. yet I spent all of middle school brushing my hair out, leaving me with a frizz ball on the top of my head. Dances, 8th grade graduation, major family events…all terrible photos.

  164. Victoria says:

    Bangs. I have really thick, heavy hair that just absolutely refuses to fall the way I wanted it to in that cute wispy sideswept way … the bangs just sort of hung there. Plus, breakout central.

  165. KL says:

    Two words: Bowl cut 🙁

  166. Jenny says:

    A stylist told me she wanted to “layer” my bangs. I had no idea what she meant but said yes anyway. No words to describe the ugliness.

  167. Rebecca says:

    My worst hair experience was adding tons of layers to my (very thick, wavy) hair. with my hair type it just made it look super poofy! yikes!!

  168. I permed my hair as a sophomore in high school. I loved it for about 2 days and then spent every morning straightening it until it grew out… not such a wise move.

  169. Catherine says:

    ha. I saw this giveaway on another blog today too. Seems like ol' Toka is just bracing for impact since Drybar's DC arrival is imminent.

  170. Kim says:

    I wanted a cute pixie cut to celebrate the end of my college career. I went to a cheap salon thinking that they could definitely deliver. Instead, I walked out with something closer to a very masculine short on the sides, long on the top cut. UG! Horrible.

  171. mcf says:

    When I was eleven, I had these wispy hairs along my forehead and decided it would be an excellent idea to cut them off — of course when they grew back in, they grew straight out, so I had this odd pointy cowlick for months!

    My little sister can beat that though – when she was six, she cut off her half pony tail, so the bottom layers of her hair were long and the top layers all jagged. The hairdresser looked distraught when we brought her in to get it fixed…

  172. Kristen says:

    I thought I could pull off a short haircut and my hair dresser didn't disagree… My only instruction to her was, “Do NOT make it look like a bush.” You know the typical soccer mom short cuts that look like a hedge? Well, that's what I walked out with. I think she heard, “Garble garble garble – make it look like a bush – garble garble.”

  173. Ellen says:

    My worst hair mistake was a cut that I got my freshman year of college. Up until that point I had longish, straightish hair. For some reason I thought that I needed a change when I came back home during fall break so I decided to get a whole new 'do. I had my mid-back length hair chopped off into a short, flippy hairstyle. At the salon it looked cute and sassy but then when I tried to redo the look it wasn't happening, especially in the midwest winter. I could never figure out how to do it so I was always wearing a headband and it looked terrible. No one even tried to lie to say it was nice. My roommate, however, still to this day thinks it was a fabulous haircut. But, bless her heart, she is from the middle of nowhere Ohio. From almost the moment I got the cut I started growing it out. The unfortunate thing was that shortly after the cut I had to get a new passport photo take. So for 10 years this one hair mistake was staring back at me on my passport. Thank goodness that I finally have a new one! To this day I always tell people that I'm still growing out that cut!

  174. SP says:

    When I was little I swam competitively. I was upset that the girls had to wear swim caps, while the boys did not. My coach calming explained it was because they didn't have long hair. I calmly explained to my stylist I needed a boy's cut. That was what I got 🙁

  175. Ann says:

    The short spikey thing in the early '90's. Have done my damnedest to make sure no pictures survive.

  176. Sara S says:

    As a misguided pre-teen, I used “sun-in”. I was also on the swim team at the time. My hair had an orange-y, chlorine infused glow for the first part of high school (until I could afford a dye job!)

  177. jlo says:

    Ooohh easy answer–junior year of high school I highlighted my own hair from a box kit to impress a guy who was coming over. Blonde highlights on dark brown hair. I remember walking downstairs and my mother actually screamed, “You're BALD.” Instead of shimmering highlights the box depicted, I ended up with bleached splotches all over, including one gigantic one towards the front of my hair line.

    I had to endure a two and a half hour correcting process the next day at the salon. To this day, my dad still insists it didn't look “that bad.”

  178. Hair Still Won't Grow says:

    Not only did I have a bowl cut until the age of 12, my mom made me sit on a stool and she would blow dry it under for me EVERY OTHER NIGHT for years. Bonus- she refused to let me use conditioner because it would make my already damaged head of hair “too oily.” My ends are still recovering at 25!

  179. PW says:

    I was so busy with school that I neglected to get my hair trimmed for far too long, and I hadn't realized how bad it looked until the day after I finally addressed the situation. I walked into my boss's office and in front of 5 or 6 of my superiors she started gushing about how healthy my hair looked and asking “Did you even know your hair was capable of looking this good?!?”

    Oops.

  180. Lynn says:

    When I was in 6th grade, I wanted a drastic change for my hair and envied a girl who could rock the short, flipped-out cut. My mom convinced me to try the same thing (even though I had glasses, braces, and chubby cheeks), and I cried as soon as my stylist had finished drying it. It didn't help that I was working at a school auction the following weekend, and as I handed a drink to one of the parents there, the dad said “Thank you, young man.” I was mortified!

  181. Morgan says:

    I definitely got cornrows on a family vacation in high school!

  182. Christy says:

    Without a doubt my biggest hair mistake was the pixie cute I got as a child. Not only did the short hair just not work for my face, I also had the pleasure of growing it out all mullet-like, yech.

  183. Linds says:

    When I got to college in my rural Midwest town, it became apparent to me that there was no hairstylist in the area who could be trusted with my thick, wavy hair.

    …So I decided to cut it myself. With regular scissors.

    Somehow I ended up with one-inch chunks of hair at the top of my crown. They stuck up everywhere, all year. It was a good look.

    Never again.

  184. M says:

    I had a killer bowl cut for years. I never got the hint that I looked like a little boy … even when my mom told me to take my hands out of my back pockets because I looked like a boy when I slouched. And don't get me started when I permed it…

  185. sai says:

    In seventh grade I did that punk-rocker thing where I shaved the underside of my hair but left the top long. It was cute for a minute, and then it started to grow out, and you cannot imagine the poufiness that ensued.

  186. Dawn says:

    I went to go get my hair chopped in high school…the stylist chopped my hair, went to style it, and threw her hands up in defeat. I was left sitting on the chair with an afro and a stylist who refused to try to fix my hair. Seriously, what stylist gives up on a 15 year old girl's hair? Traumatizing.

  187. MKal says:

    The first time I ever got layers in my hair – it looked like I had a set of stairs from my shoulders to my eyes

  188. aesthetic intelligence says:

    Highlights gone awry, think tiger stripes.
    Enough said.

  189. MCB says:

    I tried to get rid of highlights that had gone way too blond–it was supposed to end up my natural color brown. Apparently my hair is “porous” and it soaked up the dye so that I looked like I'd dipped my head in a bucket of black paint. My stylist was mortified and I spent the next two weeks washing my hair with the cheapest shampoo available to strip the color. My friends dubbed me “tiny Elvis.”

  190. Sarah M. says:

    The summer before my first year of college I went to the salon for a trim and left with a horrible bob. I let the stylist talk me into a short cut for the first time in my life and instantly regretted it!

  191. Meg says:

    an at-home dye job that turned my hair carrot orange. followed by one very expensive, very urgent corrective coloring!

  192. Leslie says:

    I moved to DC about a year ago. By September I was in much need of a highlight and grey coverage. I decided on a Gilt City voucher trusting that I love everything else Gilt. Well it was a complete fail. I was looking for a very subtle version of the ombre look because my hair was already looking that way with brown roots and light brown/blonde grown out highlights. I brought in pictures of Lauren Conrad and Giulianna Ransic's hair. In the end, the women put in permanent color and gave me red roots and platinum blonde every where else. Needless to say it's almost a year later and my hair is still suffering from the damage she did and all the color help I have needed since.

  193. Jamie says:

    Bangs! God awful bangs that I got hopping to look like Reese Witherspoon and let me tell you that it didn't work

  194. Katie Anderson says:

    When I was a child, my hair was cropped very short. So much so that I was frequently mistaken as a boy. It was very traumatic for a self-conscious young girl to receive a Hot Wheels toy in her Hapy Meal.

  195. EKats says:

    Let's just say that I never want to go back to a hair stylist whose goal with my thick, unruly, Greek hair was to keep cutting it until it “worked.” He recommended multiple trips in one week so he could “take his time” and cut strand by strand. I was ran out of there like one of my Olympic ancestors.

  196. Andrea says:

    My husband and I were both in grad school and desperately looking for ways to save money. Since I've always cut his hair, he suggested that he cut my hair as well. I should have known better given my husband's laid-back nature and therefore lack of attention to details; he took a regular pair of scissors and cut off 4 inches of hair in less than 5 minutes. It wasn't even straight, and I couldn't wear my hair down for months.

  197. Rachel says:

    I used Sun-in during my sophomore year of high school. Let's just say that I was rocking the ombre hair look about a decade before its time.

    But seriously, Sun-in should be banned from stores, so teenage idiots do not use it. Especially brunette teenage idiots like myself!

  198. JE says:

    Sadly, in 4th grade I thought I could get away with cutting my hair into a bob and not have to do any work. My sister had bone straight hair and never had to fuss with it – she was out of the shower, aired it dry and it was presentable (not awesome, but presentable). I, however, have a mishmash of straight hair at my crown and curls of varying degrees all around the crown. Needless to say, an unkempt bob with that kind of hair was a no go. I still cringe at the school photos.

  199. Mags says:

    Cutting my own hair …

  200. Lolabolt says:

    When I was 19, I desperately wanted to have platinum hair (I naturally have dark brown hair.) So, being a broke college, I tried to do it myself right before adventuring abroad to London, and arrived at my destination with very crunchy, orange hair. To fix the problem, I paid like $20 to one of the hair schools to fix it. Overprocessing aside, they did a good job (and got it to the color I wanted) but ultimately undoing the platinum took many years and a significant amount of time and money. Oops!

  201. Parker says:

    I was pinged to volunteer as a hair model for a local salon. They cut my super long, medium brown hair into a short pixy then preceded to dye it platinum. Yes, it was my fault for agreeing to this. But in my defense I assumed they would pick a style/color that would look great with my face shape and skin tone. I was wrong.

  202. Sam says:

    I had shortish ginger-red hair and I decided I would get a perm. Needless to say, I looked like Orphan Annie for most of the 5th Grade.

  203. Amanda says:

    Banana yellow “highlights”- my hair looked like a yellow highlighter. Somehow I thought get highlight at haircuttery was a good idea. Did I mention that I have dark eyebrows and olive skin? I still shudder at the memory.

  204. rachel says:

    When I was living in India, I heard my roommate talking about how soft and pretty mehendi (a natural paste made of herbs) made her friend's hair. Since she had jet-black hair, I didn't notice that it caused a reddish tint. When I tried it on myself at home, I turned my brown hair bright orange! I ran to the salon to get it dyed, and the hairstylist died laughing at me. For the next year my friends called me “blondie” for my mistake, and made me tell everyone I knew why my hair changed colors.

  205. Katrina says:

    Cutting my own bangs was possibly the most idiotic thing I've done.

  206. MBM says:

    When I was 15, I went to a Great Clips for a routine trim because, I feel, if you only need your ends trimmed, you don't need to pay $80 for a cut. After chatting it up with the stylist for a while, she earned my trust while we talked about our mutual love for our puppies, Broadway musicals, and trial running so I though, “Why not?” and asked her to cut a few layers in. BIG MISTAKE! It took 3 good haircuts scheduled 2 weeks apart to undo the damage done. At least, 15 is a pretty young age to learn that lesson.

  207. Alexis says:

    In the sixth grade, I decided to cut my own bangs to skim the tops of my eyebrows., an experiment that might have turned out fine…if I hadn't been raising my eyebrows in concentration while performing the cut. My bangs ended mid-forehead. I couldn't figure out where I'd gone wrong until I re-enacted my mistake with my horrified mother. It took months for them to grow back to a normal length!

  208. Sam says:

    Chopping my hair off from below my shoulders to a chin-length bob. Generally would have worked out, but it was in the sixth grade before I had ANY sense of how to style my hair other than air dry. The shorter my hair is, the more it curls. The first day it looked great. After that….

  209. MH says:

    Letting my sister and our good friend trim my bangs. They ended up sooo crooked.

  210. Lauren says:

    A bob. With a round face, people thought I was a boy. Not a cute look.

  211. Jessica W says:

    I was about 11, I got a “bubble cut.” It is exactly what you would imagine. When you have a round face, and thick hair, NEVER a good look.

  212. MX says:

    a hair wrap….when i was 22! i was abroad, so naturally thought it was cool because everyone in the country i was studying in had them, but when i got back to the States, it was a tell tale sign of something ugly in my hair and trying to be cool in the country i had been studying in.

  213. Sarah says:

    For an embarrassingly long time (we're talking years), I had chin-to-slightly longer length hair. As if that wasn't unflattering enough, I also dyed it various unnatural shades including, blue, DARK purple, orange and red.

    It is now its natural shade with a few highlights from January, and is about 3 inches below my shoulder. Its a lot healthier as well…

  214. KLB says:

    The worst hair mistake was in the name of charity.

    I grew my hair out for locks of love and when it was long enough I went to get my free hair cut at great clips, the first part of my mistake. When the woman asked me what kind of cut I wanted I didn't understand her at all so she just measured out the 10 inches and cut straight across. No layers. No bangs. Straight hair a little longer than my face. Lesson learned.

  215. Cee says:

    Unfortunate side-swept bangs that more resembled a huge ocean wave instead of lying prettily and flat across my forehead.

  216. MLW says:

    bleach blonde highlights with two inch roots done via a cap at WAL MART.

    needless to say it took several days to get it fixed and i skipped FOUR days of school.

  217. Shannon says:

    That time I asked for face framing layers…and walked out of the salon with blunt bangs.

  218. Ari says:

    I have very thick, curly hair and as a child i had BANGS…I fondly refer to the bangs as when I had my forehead pouf…it was awful!

  219. Julie says:

    It's a tie between the short hair my aunt gave me in seventh grade or the perm in tenth grade (i.e. when I was old enough to know better.)

  220. Margaret says:

    My haircutter convinced me to try this new style and I suddenly have a mullet. Enough said. Please, need to fix it!

Join The List

Stay up to date on the latest from Capitol Hill Style!

sUBSCRIBE

Ask Me Anything: March 2024

It’s almost the end of March, so let’s get to some of the reader questions that came in through Instagram last night. Time for Ask Me Anything.

0

READ MORE 

Recent Posts

The Find: A Cute Spring Dress

Need a cute dress for a spring event? Something simple and easy to wear, something you can dress up or down? This is the dress for you.

0

READ MORE 

Beauty Review: Bondi Boost

As I age, I notice many changes in my body. Most are fine. Some are frustrating. Like many women, I lost a lot of hair in my postpartum phase. Being anemic for more than a year after, it didn’t grow back in to its former glory. So I’ve tried any number of shampoos, pills and […]

1

READ MORE 

VIEW ALL POSTS

Ask the Edit, Style, Top Posts | March 28, 2024

Ask Me Anything: March 2024

It’s almost the end of March, so let’s get to some of the reader questions that came in through Instagram last night. Time for Ask Me Anything.

0

READ MORE 

Fantastic Finds, Posts, Style | March 28, 2024

The Find: A Cute Spring Dress

Need a cute dress for a spring event? Something simple and easy to wear, something you can dress up or down? This is the dress for you.

0

READ MORE 

Beauty, Posts | March 27, 2024

Beauty Review: Bondi Boost

As I age, I notice many changes in my body. Most are fine. Some are frustrating. Like many women, I lost a lot of hair in my postpartum phase. Being anemic for more than a year after, it didn’t grow back in to its former glory. So I’ve tried any number of shampoos, pills and […]

1

READ MORE 

Fantastic Finds, Posts, Style | March 27, 2024

The Find: Shirts That Don’t Gape

I remember when Rochelle Behrens launched The Shirt — a button-down blouse with anti-gape technology (a patented internal button that keeps the look smooth). The idea seemed brilliant, but at the time, my bust didn’t require an extra button. One baby later, I understand the need for some extra security.

6

READ MORE 

RECENT POSTS

©2023 CAPITOL HILL STYLE | SITE BY LEIGH THE STUDIO