The best way to ask for a haircut is to bring two or three reference photos, one photo of what you don't want, and an honest description of how much time you actually spend on your hair in the morning. Do those three things and you've already done more than most people who sit in my chair.
After seventeen NAHA nominations and training stylists in nine countries, I can tell you the haircuts that go wrong almost never go wrong at the shears. They go wrong in the first five minutes of conversation. So let's fix the conversation.
Photos do the heavy lifting
Words are slippery. Your "choppy layers" and my "choppy layers" might be two completely different haircuts. A photo isn't slippery. Bring two or three images of hair you love — ideally on someone with a texture and density somewhat like yours, but honestly, even an imperfect photo gives me more to work with than a paragraph of adjectives.
Here's the part almost nobody does: bring an anti-photo. One image of a haircut you'd hate. That single photo tells me where your boundaries are faster than anything else. "I love this bob, but I never want it to look like this one" — now we're really talking.
Tell me the truth about your mornings
If you give yourself four minutes and a brush before catching the Brown Line, tell me that. There's no judgment — most of my favorite cuts are built for people who don't style their hair. But if I design you a cut that assumes ten minutes with a round brush and you give it zero, you'll blame the haircut. Honest routine in, honest haircut out.
The vocabulary that actually helps
You don't need stylist jargon, but a few words go a long way. Talk about length in inches — "take off two inches" is concrete, "a little off" is a coin flip. Mention whether you want layers, and whether your hair feels heavy or limp right now. "Weight" and "movement" are magic words: "it feels heavy at the bottom" or "I want more movement around my face" tells me exactly where to work.
And the phrase that confuses every stylist alive: "just a trim, but different." A trim follows your existing lines. "Different" means changing them. Those are opposite instructions. Pick the one you mean — if you're not sure which, that's literally what we're here to figure out together. (I wrote more about that distinction in trim vs. haircut vs. dusting if you're curious.)
What a real consultation feels like
A real consultation isn't "what are we doing today?" while the cape goes on. Your stylist should touch your hair, look at how it grows, ask about your routine, look at your photos, and tell you honestly what will and won't translate to your texture. If a photo won't work on your hair, you should hear that before the first cut, not after. At Reverie in River North, every haircut appointment includes a full consultation in the chair, at no extra charge — that conversation is part of the cut, so for a haircut you can simply book the cut. If you'd rather talk it all through before you commit to anything, a standalone consultation is $50 for 15 minutes, or $150 for 30 minutes with Sal, and the fee is credited in full toward any service or any product at Reverie within 30 days — either way you leave with a written plan. And if you're not sure which of our stylists fits what you're after, we'll match you.
The short version: photos in, honesty out loud, and a stylist who listens before they lift the shears. That's the whole secret.
Book your haircut at Reverie — the consultation comes with it →
