Lorri Goddard-Clark - The Hair Color Mix Book: More Than 150 Recipes for Salon-Perfect Color at Home

THE
HAIR
COLOR
MIX
BOOK

MORE THAN 150 RECIPES FOR SALON-PERFECT
COLOR AT HOME

LORRI GODDARD-CLARK
WITH KAREN KELLY

To all at-home hair colorists.
Heres to a more beautiful hue!

W hen Lorri asked me to write a foreword to her book, I was so excited! First of all, Lorri and I have been working together for years now, and I feel that in her I have found an artistic soul mate. Whenever I am creating a new character, I go to her, and one of the first questions she asks me is, Who is she? The reason I love that is because I truly am trying to become someone.

The first step to showing who you are on the inside is the way you decorate your window on the outside. Like our clothes, our hair is a frame in which we live. It tells people who we are. It also has a tremendous effect on the way we feel about ourselves. And the color is the foundation. Everything begins with color.

Now, there are all types of color. There are the fire-engine-red punkers, the sun-kissed blond surfers, the walnut-chestnut-cocoa browns (names of food and nature apply in trying to describe a color), the jet black, the platinum blondes, the perfectly textured, highlighted and lowlighted, multidimensional-layered blondes (or as I call them, the watercolor), the ever-beautiful natural redheads. And there are about ten thousand variations on each one of these. If youre trying to achieve any of them, it is not only an art its a process.

One of the many things I love about working with Lorri is that she is one of the first colorists I met who has the perfect combination of expertise on the chemicals, color wheel, and rules. Her knowledge is impeccable. That said, she is also playful, and willing to bend the rules to get the right color. For example, when the formula youre working with says you must leave it on for 30 minutes, but really just a 5-minute application will give you the exact tone you want, bend the rules. There have been moments when my blonde went a bit too green; Lorri knew that a tint with a hint of lavender thrown in for a few minutes would take that down. Or if I want to go to a brown tone, she knows I must add and mix in some red shades, otherwise my skin goes ashy. If I have existing color underneath and am trying to move into a new color, I know that the old one is going to rear its ugly head and affect the new color I am trying to achieve. But thats me, and everyone is different.

There are two tips Ive also learned from Lorri. The first is to try to color your hair in natural daylight. Lighting at night or indoors can make hair color look quite different from the way it will appear in natural light, and thats where we will spend the most time. The second lesson is to take your time if you have that luxury. If you frantically strip your hair of color or pour one tone of color all over your head, youll usually end up with something quite different from what you envisioned, and may damage your hair in the process. The variation of color, applied carefully, gives your hair movement. And for goodness sake, never underestimate a toner!

All that said the point is to be playful and express yourself.

What Lorri has done with The Hair Color Mix Book is to share her incredible secretssecrets only someone of her caliber could know. And for that I am so grateful to her.

Good luck, and have fun!

I have been so honored to work with the crme de la crme in my field. I have been stimulated and exposed to so much talent over the years, which has inspired me to invent original techniques and formulas. I want to give back to both aspiring and dedicated at-home hair colorists by revealing some of what I have been privileged to learn over twenty-one-plus years of salon work.

The talented actresses and actors that I have worked with have also stretched my abilities. Through the years I have had the privilege to work on many films, coloring the hair of many amazing men and women, including Reese Witherspoon, Heidi Klum, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Raquel Welch, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp. Along the way, lucky stylists encounter that rare client who helps them ascend to the next level of creating great color. For me, Drew Barry-more is that clientshe has always pushed me to a higher plane of visual perfection!

Nowadays, my clients fly in from New York City, London, and all over the world to see me, and I get to do long-distance house calls. Ive gone from Beverly Hills to Africa. I have sent recipes all over the world as well, including Madonnas homes in New York and London. It still utterly amazes me that hair coloring has enabled me to travel all over the world. I used to guard my color formulas as if they were twenty-four-karat gold. I would take them home every night from the salon. As I FedExed recipes to clients across the globe, more frequently, I began thinking about my policy of keeping my recipes a secret. I remembered that when I was in my teens, I wanted to emulate the models and actresses in magazines. I didnt exactly have the budget to do so, but I did have the creativity, desire, and drive. I think there are many people like that. They want to do it themselves.

I want to share my favorite recipes and techniques because, at heart, I am just like you. I have the same spirit of invention and optimism that all home colorists share. Even though Im based in Hollywood and work with many celebrities, movie stars, and film-industry executives, I think of myself as the ultimate at-home colorist. I love to experiment, try new things, and have fun. I still get excited when I discover a new technique or when the result of a new recipe is extra special.

Hair coloring, after all, is much like cooking, painting, or any other creative endeavor. First you learn the rules, and then you learn how to break them and find your own style. Actually, I think my very earliest artistic endeavors were a sign of things to come. I started painting when I was three or four years old. My wonderful stepfather, Jon, was an architect, and he and my mother, Connie, had a keen interest in art and creativity. After school, they would give me three dollops of primary color paint to fool around with. Both of them painted and he sculpted, so I felt intimately involved in the artistic process from a very early age. Without Jon and my mothers encouragement, I would not be who I am today.

It wasnt long before I put down my finger paints and turned my attention to hair color. Early experiments included adding Sun-In, the classic spray-on lightener, to my hair and styling my mothers and sisters hair and doing their makeup. However, hair color didnt become a true passion of mine until I was on summer break while studying as a nursing student and special education major at Centralia Community College in Washington State.

My aunt Peggy Olsen owned a salon called the Curling Iron in Upland, California. In fact, she won many beehive trophies for the elaborate hairstyles she constructed! During this particular summer break, I went to Upland and worked as a receptionist in the salon. As I quietly kept the books and scheduled clients, I would look around and think, Wow, a salon allows you to have fun, be creative, make money, and meet interesting people! Redken representatives came in to the Curling Iron and would conduct detailed color classes. I started sitting in on them. Redken was a major hair company (now owned by LOral), and its approach to hair coloring was very scientific and clinical. Their seminars opened my eyes even further about the possibilities for hair-color work. I think it was at that point that I thought to myself,