The Colorist

NOV-DEC 2014

For hair color trends and celebrity hair, colorists turn to The Colorist. Celebrity hair, hair color ideas, hair color products and more.

Issue link: https://thecoloristmag.epubxp.com/i/406219

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 24 of 52

22 The Colorist | NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 | thecoloristmag.com deep dish Celebrity colorist Johnny Ramirez was posting makeovers online long before it was popular. We got him to open up about his meteoric rise to fame. PHOTOGRAPHY: COURTESY OF JOHNNY RAMIREZ icons JOHNNY RAMIREZ is one of the hardest working colorists on the planet. He met his business partner, Anh Co Tran, while they were both working at Neil George Salon. ➻ "I noticed that we were the fi rst ones in every morning and the last ones out at night," says Ramirez, who recognized a kindred spirit when he saw one. ➻ Today, Ramirez Tran Salon is one of the top four salons in Beverly Hills. H e calls himself an old-school colorist, who was trained by Michael Canale (he's been doing Jennifer Aniston's color for years) and is still partial to Miss Clairol. "T e new generation passes it by because they don't see it around, but it has amazing shine," he says. Still there's nothing old-school about Johnny Ramirez's use of social media. In fact, he started a blog—Box No. 216—while working at Chris McMillan in Beverly Hills more than six years ago. "I knew I was onto something when the tech-savvy kids at the salon couldn't fi nd another one online." Today he has followers from all over the world. For the record, Ramirez came up with the name for his blog quite by accident. "I bought this big, heavy military-type box at a yard sale years ago. It must be a hundred years old," he says. "Anyway, it says 'Box Number 216' on the side, and I thought, that's it." T e blog came about because Ramirez wanted to document the dramatic makeovers he was doing at Chris McMillan. "I was doing all this color correction that no one else wanted to do, the kind of stuff that takes all day," he says. "Some woman would come in with jet- black hair, and she'd walk out of the salon as a blonde eight hours later." A self-described color junkie, Ramirez began taking before and after photos of each client in the alley behind the salon. "All these other colorists, who were too cool for school, wondered why I was taking all these pictures, but after I'd been posting them for about six months, this huge wave of new clients poured into the salon." T e thing about corrective color work, says Ramirez, is that you never know how long it's going to take, and most of the hairdressers he worked with weren't willing to cancel their dinner reservations or miss a concert because they couldn't get out of the salon on time. But Ramirez was hungry, and he was trying to build a clientele, and with practice he got really, really good. As for those befores and afters he kept posting, well, let's just say that a picture is worth a thousand words. T e fi rst thing Ramirez did when he left Chris McMillan for Neil George Salon was buy a bigger camera. "People eventually picked up on the fact that I was getting six or seven new clients a day," says Ramirez, whose photos are constantly being repinned. "Technology has changed everything," he allows. "Social media has made it so much easier to build a clientele." Two years ago, Ramirez and Anh Co Tran, a gifted hairdresser he met at Neil George, opened Ramirez Tran Salon in Beverly Hills, where he's busier than ever, but he's still blogging. Check him out on pinterest.com/ boxno216 or at boxno216.com.

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

Archives of this issue

view archives of The Colorist - NOV-DEC 2014