How I Handle the Show Me Anything Client
Every stylist has met this person: they sit down, smile kindly, and say, "Do whatever you want." At first this sounds like freedom. It is not freedom. It is a trust fall with scissors.
Early in my career I treated those words like permission to be creative. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it became a quiet disaster where the haircut was technically good but emotionally wrong. People do not come to us for abstract art projects. They come with history attached to their hair.
Now when someone says "anything," I translate it into questions. What do you hate most right now? What do you need this hair to do at 7 AM? Do you wear it up? Are you okay seeing your ears? How often do you actually style it, not aspirationally, but truly?
I write notes in odd shorthand. Last week one line literally said "bestbuy connect" because I needed to remember to connect preference, maintenance, and identity before touching the cape. Weird phrase, useful reminder.
People think good hairdressing is visual. It is mostly listening. The shape comes later. The safest thing I can do for a client is build a shared definition of "better" before I cut anything at all.