We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Lune Wynyard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Lune thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. One of the things we most admire about small businesses is their ability to diverge from the corporate/industry standard. Is there something that you or your brand do that differs from the industry standard? We’d love to hear about it as well as any stories you might have that illustrate how or why this difference matters.

In many ways, an Intuitive Dry Cut is unlike other haircut experiences most people have ever had. In fact, I need to prepare each of my new clients for this at the onset by explaining that I intentionally get them to their “worst hair day possible” during the course of their haircut, as a result of combing their dry hair and moving it around until it is at maximum volume and frizz level. My logic is that if both myself–a perfectionist–and they–anxious about looking good–can agree that we are mutually happy with the end result, it’s almost guaranteed to only look better with even minimal effort.

I don’t include a wash in my current system, because I need to see each person’s unique hair growth pattern, which is erased when it gets wet and also temporarily smoothed over and eradicated by blow-drying. For this reason I cut unwashed hair, just as it lays naturally. I send each client instructions prior to their service, asking them to come to me with their most typical hair, air dried and with minimal product in it. If someone only washes their hair every 3 days, it might make sense to arrive on day 2.

In the past, I washed everyone’s hair after the cut, to reset it and address any details after it was dry. I no longer offer this for a few reasons, but I do offer everyone a complimentary 15-minute touch-up appointment if they reach out to schedule it within 2 weeks of the original cut. This allows clients to go home and shower to see how it will realistically air dry and arrange itself under their own circumstances.

Some hair types go into shock after a cut and people wait for several days in some cases for it to calm down and get used to its new form, so they can see how the haircut will actually look once it “settles into itself.” I’ve also discovered over the years that my haircuts tend to look their absolute best about 3-4 weeks after the cut, and then continue to look better and better for the following few months as the hair grows.

This is unusual according to almost everyone I’ve talked with. I hear a lot of complaints from people who sit in my chair, about their previous experiences with hair stylists and salons. They feel as though their requests for hair that doesn’t require extra styling are not honored. I now understand that this is the case because the industry at large–what I like to call “Big Cosmo”–has designed the system that way, so folks don’t feel empowered to explore those lower-maintenance options, but must rather spend money on products, tools, and services that chemically alter their hair in order to adhere to the beauty standards that have been set for us, and which are perpetuated by hair professionals because of our cosmetology education. Without thinking for ourselves and questioning the motivations of Big Cosmo, we become stuck in a powerful machine that relies on us to continue generating its profits by pushing services and styles that require heat styling and structural manipulation of hair.

I’ve made it my personal mission to disrupt this disempowering system by doing things differently and deviating from that standard. I’d like to show people that those beauty ideals are not set in stone, but that they’ve been engineered to promote certain physical qualities over others. This makes the vast majority of the population feel as though they fall short unless they modify their natural hair in order to measure up. When they receive a hair cut that pays close attention to their cowlicks, kinks, and curls, and works with their individual growth pattern rather than superimposing a cookie cutter formula overtop of it, they are given an experience in which their whole person is honored and listened to. This example of radical acceptance is something they can internalize and apply to other areas of their life afterward, because they are equipped with the tools to start approaching their hair, at the very least, from a different perspective than they may have known was possible.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My entry into the world of hair was accidental and reluctant; I began cutting my own hair in high school as the last resort after many disappointing events at salons. I used kitchen scissors and exacto blades. Youtube didn’t exist. I cut hair the way I approached my art projects at school, thinking creatively without knowing what “inside the box” would even have entailed.

My friends trusted me enough to give them haircuts and eventually in college I could be found cutting hair outside my dorm, attracting more clients without meaning to, just by being so visible. Each year I squeezed more people in around restaurant and barista work until my cuts costs a whopping $40 and my schedule was becoming stressful to manage. After hemming and hawing I finally decided to legitimize myself and become a licensed professional, choosing to get my cosmetology license in NYC which was a real experience. I joke that hair school is the one thing I actually ever truly saw through from beginning to end, and barely by a hair, at that, no pun intended.

Thank goodness I did because I never looked back. I’m proud to support my family fully as a single parent working part time cutting hair and mentoring students online without having to expose myself to harmful chemicals on a daily basis, and while spending my daughter’s early years together as much as possible. I’ve owned a busy, successful hair salon with 9 employees, and I’ve worked privately out of a variety of spaces and situations over the years.

I work with my favorite medium: people. If I’d had it in me to finish college, I would likely have become a therapist. It’s a joke that hair stylists are underpaid therapists but it’s true, and I love leaning into the space-holding side of what I do. The reward is in the gratification, not of seeing someone’s hair look artificially pretty, based on beauty standards I find problematic and uninspired, but knowing that each of my clients is moving closer to a healthy and harmonious relationship with their own hair and thus with a real part of their true selves.

I coach clients towards greater self-acceptance, and help stylists to figure out their most sustainable path forward by teaching them Intuitive Dry Cutting. It is a multidimensional path of growing self-awareness and questioning the narrative we’ve inherited from our culture, and it couldn’t be more rewarding.

I practice and teach ‘the Art of Air Drying’ so that folks can understand their own hair better and work with it, instead of against it. I use a small handful of high-quality, all-natural products crafted by Afterworld Organics, a queer woman owned small business that makes the most beautiful one-step cleanser I’ve ever encountered.

I feel grateful every day that I get to do work that feels sustainable on so many levels, and that satisfies my soul and my love for working with my hands and working with the earth.

What’s been the most effective strategy for growing your clientele?

Dropping in while I’m at work, and being fully present while I’m doing what I do, is the only way I’ve ever marketed my work: simply knowing that I am giving each client 100% of myself during appointments. I’ve designed my career to be sustainable even if I don’t sustain the same location forever. Hair stylists are of course typically rewarded for their stability, but I’ve managed to grow a clientele quickly from scratch, without previous connections in an area, a few different times now, and I’ve relied on word of mouth and client referrals for that.

I believe that if someone is doing what they’re passionate about, there is an opportunity to reach a flow state while engaging in that activity. Cutting hair and talking with clients about real things is that flow for me. I come alive when I’m helping people meet and greet their natural hair, and the impact of the experience speaks for itself. When someone feels held and seen and heard, it leaves an imprint that pays itself forward effortlessly. It’s almost like the idea of karma if that makes sense.

It also helps that hair is very visible, so the advertising is in the wearability and the longer term grow-out of the cut itself. People are often surprised, reporting back to me that they’ve continued to have strangers approach them complimenting their hair, even after months have gone by since their last cut and without any additional styling. I believe it is not the technical haircut that is being complimented, but the way the person themself can shine through.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

For years in New York City, I worked a few dinner shifts a week at a restaurant, and cut hair during the days out of my Brooklyn loft. Or I’d ride my bike to make house calls in Manhattan high rises, or on Virginia porches when I’d visit those Appalachian roots. I enjoyed bartering for all sorts of things whenever I could: massages, flowers, bread, produce, facials, lessons.

I’ll never forget the day I agreed to rent a chair at the first salon I’d ever worked at, in Greenwich Village; my tiny station cost more than my loft. A friend of mine exclusively did coloring, and asked me to do the cutting for his clients and vice versa. It was a massive leap for me to make that sort of commitment to the hair cutting, and I did it against what conventional wisdom might preach. In fact, it was an astrologer (who I’d traded a haircut for a reading) who told me to trust my intuition completely. I remember being scared and doing it anyway, hearing her words in my head.

Within a few years I’d opened a salon over 2 hours north in Hudson, NY, to which people eventually traveled from NYC (and beyond) to get their hair cut. I had 9 employees and an S-corporation by the spring of 2020. And of course that’s when my online teaching career was conceived, out of necessity. It’s also when my daughter was conceived, and my life turned upside down in the best way possible.

My current side hustle is the teaching of my cutting methodology, because I’m still cutting as my main form of income. It’s funny to think that the hair cutting is now the gig holding things together while I find bits of time here and there to dedicate to putting myself out there as a teacher, which is really an entirely new career, related but completely different.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.intuitivedrycutting.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intuitive.dry.cutting/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@intuitivedrycutting

Image Credits

Jen Fox
Jennifer Lynn Morse