Painted beard, beetles and combat makeup: the strangest customer requests

The career of absolutely every master of hairdressing, be it a barber, wedding stylist, colorist or universal hairdresser, is full of awkward, funny, and sometimes even creepy stories that are primarily associated with clients. And we are not talking about a late client or a cancellation of a visit 5 minutes before, but about something much more serious and even more interesting.

We asked our PRO Beauty Battle Hair judges about the strangest requests from their clients and stories that have ever happened to them at work. And in the arsenal of the masters there were several funny, cute and not so funny stories, which they told below.

Yana Skidanova , wedding stylist, hairstyle teacher at NBschool

To be honest, there have been many different stories in my career, because, whatever one may say, 13 years of experience as a wedding stylist will accumulate a whole carload of completely different events.

The story happened to my regular client, for whom we created a look for her prom. Time has passed, and now she is getting married, and we are planning a wedding dress rehearsal. The rehearsal is going well, everything has been agreed upon.

Literally a few days before the wedding, she receives a call with the question: “Yan, please tell me, can you do men’s makeup?” Usually men do not agree to such an action, especially at a wedding.

I say: “No problem if your man agrees.” And she answers me: “He will agree, he has no choice.” We ended up talking, and I found out why he “would have to agree.” It turns out that the day before they had a bachelorette party and a bachelor party, respectively. The bachelorette party ended successfully, but the bachelor party ended a little tragically. The guys ran away somewhere, and the groom was beaten by 12 servicemen, and his face, to put it mildly, suffered greatly. And there were 4 days left before the wedding.

I refused such a request in every possible way, because my face was in terrible condition and there were even stitches. This incident is not funny at all, but very real. As a result, when it was time to get the bride ready in the morning, everything was fine, but when I moved on to the groom, I was shocked. But everything turned out well: the power of cosmetics corrected everything, there was an experienced operator - both the video and the photographs turned out to be very beautiful.

The next story was quite a long time ago, probably about 6 years ago, but I also really remember it. I came to my bride, and she was pregnant, and we started doing hair and makeup. And now I’m finishing my makeup, asking her to look in the mirror, asking how she likes it. And then my client begins to sob loudly and wipe off her makeup along with her tears.

A minute later, a serious woman, the mother of this bride, comes into the room and says: “Yana, don’t worry!” And he starts talking to the bride: “Get ready, in the end! You should have thought earlier when you started dating him, but now it’s too late, you got married!” So we found out that she was crying not because of makeup (and I was already starting to get nervous), but because she had to get married, say goodbye to her single life.

Dmitry Cherevatykh , leading master of barbershop “Tsiryulnik”, educator, author of unique courses on advanced training for barbers and training in barbering from scratch

I had one interesting case with a regular client: a father and son came. Dad had a thick, half-gray beard, and during each visit his little son kept asking for a beard like his. The child sat down in a chair to have his hair cut and said: “I want a beard, like my dad’s.” Where can I get it from? He's small.

And my dad and I made an interesting decision to buy two markers: gray and black. At the next haircut, the little client again asks for a beard, and I say: “Today we will give you a beard, close your eyes.” I place him on the headrest of the chair, like an adult, and begin to draw a mustache and beard for him with a marker, like his dad. The child's happiness knew no bounds!

Maxim Stifler , master of men's haircuts, founder of TheSketch barbershop network, barber coach and member of the Pro Beauty Battle Hair jury

Several cases are vividly imprinted in my memory, and I will briefly talk about each of them. The strangest request I've ever had from a client was when he asked me to help him find a place to buy illegal drugs.

One day an American came to our barbershop, he was cutting his hair in the next chair and asked the barber to give him a three-piece haircut. But he didn’t specify - under 3 mm or under the number of the nozzle for the machine. When they cut his hair to 3 mm, he began to scream loudly and be indignant, although there was not much difference before and after, he has very thin hair, and in the end it was as if nothing had changed.

There was a case when a very hasty and twitchy client came to us with a request for a shave. While shaving, he grabbed a straight razor from the master, began to shave himself and actually slashed his entire face. Blood splashed in different directions; all the towels were already handed to him. There was blood all over, and everyone was in shock (including the clients who were in the barbershop at the time).

A funny incident happened when a client ran away from a barbershop wearing a haircut cape. Someone called him, he snapped and ran away from the barbershop in this cape. He never returned, and, accordingly, no one ran after him either.

And, probably, the most unusual story that never happened to us. The manager of the Nigerian ambassador (if I'm not mistaken) called us and asked if we could schedule the ambassador for a haircut, but with unusual requests. It turned out that some unusual bugs lived in the ambassador’s hair. Before cutting, you need to collect them in a jar, trim your temples and be sure to put the bugs back in your hair, because they are sacred. At the same time, they asked whether the ambassador could smoke his herbs of unknown nature during a haircut, and the obligatory condition was that no one (not counting the staff) was in the barbershop. But we never took up this request and still don’t know whether it was a hoax or the truth.