I am not one of those every-six-weeks salon girls. I haven’t curled or straightened my hair in years, and my beauty routine is really not a routine at all- wash every 5-7 days, pump with dry shampoo, brush before bed and when I wake up, and mask damage with a few pumps of Oi oil to make it look like I (hair)care. And haircuts? I usually wait for a sign. That sign hit me by my hands and brush hitting the walls of my tiny Brooklyn bathroom as I tried to blow dry it the past few weeks. I realized that my long hair had outgrown my living arrangements. It was time to take action.
I contacted Nackie Karcher, the brains, namesake, and creative force behind The Karcher in Greenpoint, for input.
I was led to her because Nackie and her salon had become an institution in the neighborhood. The devout testimonials I’d heard over the years made me curious, and her approach to hair and style seemed to match my lifestyle flawlessly. Growing up both in St. Petersburg and Key West Florida, Nackie’s attitude towards hair is reminiscent of her coastal roots; natural and no-fuss, concentrating on styles that balance facial structure and hair type instead of chasing a look that will take hours to tame and tons of products to maintain.
When I contacted her, she agreed to meet but made a request. “Trust me to do whatever I want,” she said. “I’m always looking for a muse.”
My immediate reaction was obviously, hell no. I’ve always felt that my hair was a signature part of my look. I’d worn it long and wild ever since the one bob I had at the age of 5 when I was mistaken for a boy at Disney World. After that, I instated the hairstyle that would definitively define me for the next 25 years. “Long layers, only cut off enough to make it look healthy,” I’d said to so many stylists in so many hydraulic chairs.
When I had time to think it over, I felt the frustration that happens when anyone doesn’t trust an artist enough to do their craft. When someone “edits” a piece that I’ve written so much that all that exists anymore is red rewrites and punctuation, or when a guest extensively looks over the cocktail menu and asks me in detail about the concentration of our herbal infusions and where we source our ice before finally saying, “You know what? I’ll have a vodka soda.”
Nothing is more frustrating than feeling deliberately untrusted to execute the craft that you have so passionately devoted yourself to.
“I love this idea,” I told her. “Let’s do it.”
And then I found myself half-holding on to my tangibly-long brown hair as I biked to The Karcher this past Sunday. I walked up the stairs hesitantly into what I feared could be the end of me, hair-wise, and towards what I hoped would be the best haircut of my life.
When I sat down in the non-hydraulic, vintage leather chair in front of Nackie, everything felt different. For one, I wasn’t staring back at my head unnaturally sticking out from a creepy vinyl cape; I was wearing a colorful kimono-esque robe. “You aren’t a mannequin,” she told me. “I need to see your body too when I’m imagining a style for you, not just a floating head.”
She began a series of movements, twisting and squeezing and observing the way my hair naturally lays. “I want to totally shag it out,” she said. And the 1970s vibe of the space and her overall demeanor gave me the confidence that this was a good idea. “I won’t cut anything shorter than your cheekbones here, but it will create a shape that has tons of volume and depth,” she told me. I looked in the mirror and at myself and my 20” of dead, heavy hair. It was apparent that I needed a good shag.
Then she got to work, washing my hair with Hair Story’s New Wash, a cleansing cream that yields conditioner useless. It’s a detergent-free product that nourishes as it cleans instead of stripping your hair of its natural oils, a no-suds approach to cleansing that replenishes a lifetime’s worth of shampoo damage that you didn’t know you had. It felt like a full hair baptism that I decided relinquished me of most of my other sins as well.
When I sat down with her in the chair, she began razoring through my hair in a rather haphazard yet calculated manner, twisting and turning and pulling the hair to see how it would react. I saw her creating a loose frame for my face as she began to paint a picture of her life in the neighborhood I’d now accepted as my home. “I met my husband when we were both living in a converted loft space on Greene Street,” she told me. “We started dating and moved in together. Then we got a dog, then we had to kids, and we still live there now, on the same block.”
I let this sink in as she fussed over my hair, this perfect little Greenpoint love story. I realized that this is why we are drawn to Brooklyn; we are pulled here by energy and curiosity but kept here by the feeling of community, of real human connectivity, of creating some sort of sanctuary on a little block in Greenpoint from which so much of our lives will transpire, eventually maybe into new lives.
She started to blow dry my hair, using only her fingers to define my natural, yet oft-hidden, waves. She squeezed and twisted and every so often and started to form this perfect 70s-esque shag style that fit right in with the funky interior of the salon – palm tree murals, statement lighting, gold accents and a revived-disco era feel that made me feel cooler just by being there. And now I also looked cooler.
She worked more as a sculptor forming clay instead of a stylist taming hair, creating a sustainable look that wasn’t going to disappear once I left the black armchair. She added a bit of Hairstory spray powder to boost my layers and gave my hair a healthy bit of definition that I couldn’t stop playing with. I left realizing how much I had been holding myself and my style back for years with the phrase, “Long layers, only cut off enough to make it look healthy,” instead by changing it to, “I trust you. Do whatever you want.” And also, looking exactly like Stana Katic in For Lovers Only, just two weeks before I leave for Paris.
Visit The Karcher for a salon experience that will help you reimagine your “signature look” and develop a style that is definitively yours. No harsh chemicals, no high-tech tools, no feeling that you’ll never recreate that fresh-from-the-salon look; just your hair, looking a hell of a lot better than it ever has before.
The Karcher is located at 760 Manhattan Ave. Visit their website here and follow them on Instagram for daily style inspiration and honest hair advice.
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