Rita Hazan

It’s hard not to be impressed when you step out of the elevator at Rita Hazan’s Fifth Avenue HQ. The space, which serves as the home of her salon and product line empire, is inspiring, and even more so when you hear her story. Because in a world where success appears to happen overnight, Rita has been in the game for almost 30 years, learning the ropes at Oribe right out of beauty school before building a celebrity clientele and venturing out on her own.

You may not recognise her face, but you know her work – she’s the colourist behind many iconic Hollywood colour changes. Mariah Carey was her first high profile client and she’s worked with everyone from Jennifer Lopez to Madonna ever since. Remember that honey blonde pixie cut look Beyoncé sported earlier this year? All Rita.

Her approach to colour is special – anyone that’s had the good fortune to sit in her chair will tell you that – and she cultivated that magic the old fashioned way: being professional, creative and nice to work with, and honing her craft through years of hard work. I caught up with Rita last week to talk about the art of scaling a business, the importance of the hustle and why you should never be deterred by hearing the word ‘no’.


Rita Hazan


WHEN SHE FIRST REALISED SHE WANTED TO WORK AS COLOURIST: It happened really naturally. Hair was just a way of life for me. I’ve always had difficult curly hair and growing up, there wasn’t many tools or products for people with curly hair. I really didn’t like my curly hair. I used to blow it out straight all the time so I guess I became interested in hair just by trying to find ways to deal with mine. When it came to deciding what I was going to do with my life, the only thing I knew I could do was hair.

WHY COLOUR? I never liked cutting or blow drying hair. I went to beauty school and you had to cut hair and I never liked it. It’s not for me. I’m too heavy handed so I’d always cut my fingers off. It’s a tough job to do. I find that with colour it’s more like painting. It took me until recently to discover that my gift is understanding tones. That’s something that’s very difficult to learn. You either have it or you don’t. You can be blonde but the wrong shade of blonde.

HOW GETTING INTO THE INDUSTRY WAS DIFFERENT WHEN SHE STARTED: Back then, everything was more about hustling, finding your own way and working hard for what you want to have and where you want to go. There wasn’t the Internet or a place for you to be discovered. If you wanted something, you would actively have to go out there and get it. I knew where I wanted to work so that helped. For me, magazines were bible and I would always read about Oribe. I remember saying, ‘I love this guy. I have to find him. I have to work for him.’ Lucky for me, I grew up in New York so I didn’t have to go far. I got to stay at home and pursue my dream. I got my licence, went [into his salon] and said, ‘this is what I want to do,’ and I got the job on the spot. It was back in the ‘90s, which was such a great time because you got to be creative and nobody was worried about the consequences. It was a time where the focus on beauty and hair in a big way. It was a really fun atmosphere.


Rita HazanON THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ASSISTING PROCESS: It’s probably one of the most important things you can do. If you don’t do it, I don’t know how you can learn. I have natural talent but I learned my craft. There’s so many things you need to know. I worked under [top celebrity colourist] Brad Johns. He trained me on things I would never have learned on my own like how to use colour and manipulate it to do what you want, but also the fact that you always need to be scared of it. It’s chemicals. Anything can happen. You can’t be cocky. Having a mentor and being able to watch them work and also see their mistakes is so important. I didn’t do the same kind of work that Brad did, but I took the technique and the lessons he taught me and I used that to create my own style. I assisted for a very long time, around five or six years. I started out when I was 17 so I was really young. I had no desire to get promoted or get a chair. I was just having fun and I wanted to learn. It’s a big responsibility taking those kinds of responsibilities on and I think people who don’t take the time to learn always crash and fail. Anything you do, you really need to know in order to be great. I wasn’t making much money so it was never about money for me.

ON THE HUSTLE: When I was assisting, I had more than one job. You have to hustle. I think a lot of young kids don’t realise that. I was working two or three jobs at a time. Someone would offer me a certain amount of money to do a hair job for a day and I’d always be in. I was never not working; not because it’s my dream to work every day but because my dream was to be do what I loved to do and in order to do that, I had to hustle on the other side. But don’t get me wrong, I had a great time. I clubbed, I drank – I did everything that young people do. But I realised that in order for me to do what I want to do, I had to make sacrifices and really hustle.

ON TRANSITIONING FROM ASSISTING TO HAVING HER OWN CLIENTS: First I got promoted. They were like, ‘it’s time for you to have your own chair unless you want to be an assistant forever!’ I knew I was ready. I was afraid but I wasn’t as afraid as I was before. I feel like everyone knows when it’s their time and I knew it was time. It was scary to get promoted but it was also exciting. I never shy away from fear. If there’s something that makes me nervous, I run towards it. Fear doesn’t stop me.

ON DEVELOPING YOUR OWN STYLE AND HOW SHE CREATED HERS: Learn your craft and know it inside and out, then you can figure out honing your vision. Going through that process allows you to understand your art and your craft better. My style hasn’t changed much over the years. It’s always been sophisticated glamour with a little rock ‘n’ roll edge. You can look edgy but also look glamorous at the same time. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can have drama but also have a sophisticated spin to it. Fashion has always been a big influence on me. It’s important to follow what’s trending and take elements of that and incorporate it into what you do. Your hair and your clothing has to work together. Everything from head to toe needs to balance and make sense. That’s why a lot of the time when it comes to awards season, celebrities will do their hair after they’ve picked what they’re going to wear. It’s all about creating a complete look.


Rita Hazan


HOW SHE STARTED WORKING WITH CELEBRITIES: It wasn’t very long after I got promoted. It was the ‘90s and everything was very chunky, which is not my aesthetic so I wasn’t particularly loving it. It just didn’t work in my eyes so I started to do what I liked and built a clientele around that. One of the guys I worked with was working with Mariah Carey and said that she was getting a divorce, had a new album coming out and needed a new look so thought it’d be great for me to work with her. She was my first celebrity client. I went to her house and I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m in Mariah’s house but whatever nerves you have, pull it together and just do your job.’ I think from the first time I did that and worked with someone high profile, I realised that it’s just a job. Get it done, make sure they’re happy and make sure everything works out. I changed her whole look and ended up doing her hair for the next five years. At that time, Jennifer Lopez was on the come up and she had really brown hair so wanted to change her look and came to me. Both of them have had small changes over the years but have kept those styles. It just seemed to be that when people wanted to change their look and do something completely different, everyone would always say, ‘this is the girl to go to. Go see Rita.’

ON COMPETITION & KEEPING THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE: I’m more than happy to work with people who do what I do. I’ve never felt threatened or competitive with anyone else. I’m just not like that. The culture today is a lot more about people trying to get theirs but it wasn’t always like that. Social media has a big part to play in that and I think people need to learn to take it with a grain of salt. It’s filtered. Most people don’t show you the shit part of the day and how it didn’t work out with a project or a client. The pictures and the stories they create are always perfect and people look and think, ‘they have the best live ever,’ when they could be having the worst time of their lives. Take social media for what it is. Enjoy it – it’s creative, it’s visual – but don’t try and compete with what you see on it.


Rita Hazan


LEARNING UNDER ORIBE: I really didn’t have ambitions to launch something of my own. At the time when I started, it really wasn’t an option. I was a woman in a male’s industry. I worked for Oribe for 10 years before I started out on my own. I left his place on good terms. He gave me opportunities. He allowed me to grow and flourish and be who I am. That was the place where I grew up. I learnt everything in that place so I just wanted to make sure that he knew I was thankful. I wanted to leave on good terms and it’s nice. We’re still good friends to this day and that doesn’t happen often.

HOW HER SALON CAME INTO BEING: A client said to me, ‘why don’t you open up your own place?’ and I remember thinking, ‘who needs that headache?’ But then we got on the subway home together – we were both heading downtown –we didn’t stop talking about it. I went home that night and I told my mum, ‘I think I want to open my own salon.’ And she was like, ‘okay, do it!’ I went and looked for places and found a small place I knew I could afford with my existing clientele. I worked there for two to three years on my own. I knew that if people wanted to work with me, they’d come. I’ve always thought it’s rude to recruit from someone else’s salon. It’s disrespectful. People do it to me and it’s fine but my people don’t leave. Most of these people have been here since the day I started and what I like to do is to promote from within. We train and we promote.


Rita HazanON SCALING UP: First we were on the first floor, then we took the second floor but we quickly outgrew that space. There was no more room for us. At the time, I was working seven days a week but I still needed to get my nails done and get my waxes and facials. I would find myself going all across the city going to these amazing people and wasting so much time. It struck me that I couldn’t have been the only women running around town to different places for their beauty services in-between working. So I thought, ‘I’m going to get a space, call all the people that I love and tell them that this is what’s happening.’ I wanted to create somewhere where women could get everything done quickly, but well, and in the same pace.

ON THE WOMEN THAT SIT IN HER CHAIR: It’s always been hard for me to find an assistant to work under me because I’m super-fast. My clients are very particular about what they like and what they don’t like – and I’m very particular too. I think you definitely get a clientele like you. Most of my clients are businesswomen. They’re busy. They don’t have time to sit and chat. Sometimes they’ll arrive and leave on their phone and it’s like they haven’t even processed that they’ve come and gone. I feel like these days, it’s very important for a woman to be groomed. It’s not even a luxury anymore; it’s part of the process. You can’t have roots; you can’t have grey. You don’t want to look ungroomed. It’s a different world now.

ON BEING UNDETTERED BY PEOPLE WHO COULDN’T SEE HER VISION: When I got the whole floor here people said I was crazy and that I was overextending myself and that it’s never going to work because people already have their favourite places to go. But I knew that if women could their colour done while getting a manicure, they’d be happy. The moment we opened, everyone instantly understood. I think the problem is that many people can’t see a vision. If you listen to people who tell you no, you’ll never do anything. I’ve always been instinctual and ask myself: what’s the worst that can happen? What, I’ll go broke? I’ve been broke. I don’t care. I’ll go back to eating peanut butter and jelly? I love that! None of that scares me. Money was never the driver for me. I know people will think that it’s easy for me to say that now but I’ve always been like that.

SETTING YOUR RATES AND STICKING TO THEM: You should get paid for your services 100 per cent. I know a lot of people want to get into a business so will work for free but I don’t think that’s a good idea. Working for free isn’t smart because nobody will ever value you. You’ve valued yourself at zero. And they’ll work you like a dog for free too. That’s why I always ask what people’s budgets are; that way I can work within their budget without devaluing what I do. Free, I’ve never done. A favour here and there is no problem but free, I won’t do. Just like you won’t get up and work for free, neither will I.

ON CREATING HER OWN PRODUCT LINE: My job is colour. I just felt like nobody was really focusing on it. In a line, there’d only be one shampoo for coloured hair. There were no products out there for maintenance. Whenever I’d do interviews, people would always ask me what women could do at home between hair appointments to cover their roots. I always thought it was crazy that nothing actually existed. Everyone was telling me to do a product line but I always thought, ‘the world doesn’t need me to do a product line just because I do J. Lo’s hair.’ I always said I wouldn’t come out with something unless it had a purpose. I didn’t open this place without knowing that people needed a place like this to go to so I wanted to make sure I was really adding something necessary to the product space. Also, being a woman and trying to launch a product line at the time was hard. Now there are lots of women doing it but there wasn’t when I did. I was also the only colourist with a salon, which I never understood either. It’s a lot of work but it’s fun.


Rita HazanWHY BEING THE FIRST IS OKAY: Somebody’s got to do it. You always have to have a first and I don’t mind it being me. It was a natural progression for me. I need to be challenged. I need to be excited. I need to be scared and nervous. I need a lot of emptions. Doing the same thing every day would be boring for me. It’s just my personality. For a lot of people, doing the same thing every day is enough – you know, take your check and go home. But for crazy people like me, it’s never enough. I started my line off with a roots concealer, which took me about four years to create. It wasn’t an easy process. Nobody wanted to work with me. It was an idea that nobody understood at the time, which is the problem I face with every new thing I want to do. Also, I knew the problem that needed to be solved but didn’t know how to do it. Randomly, I woke up one day and realised that it needed to be a spray. I tried to find people to help me. I used my own money and found a company to help me and we brought out the Root Concealer.

ON FUNDING THE LINE WITH HER OWN MONEY: I don’t want to use someone’s money and allow them to then tell me what to do. I knew that this product was going to be a game changer but as with anything, there was a 50/50 chance of failure. I don’t like when people tell me what to do. I get that when they invest, they want to stick with deadlines but I don’t like working like that. Creating the line cost me a lot of money and took a long time – we went past our deadline millions of times – but at the end of the day, it’s my money. I can do what I want. If I burn it, it’s down to me. If it’s a success, it’s on me too. My Root Concealer ended up being my hero product in the line and by the way, it created a whole new category in the beauty industry. It’s always funny when the people who once called you crazy are now copying you. I don’t mind when people call me crazy because it proves I’m on to something.

WHY YOU SHOULDN’T BE DETTERED BY HEARING ‘NO’: Nobody ever says yes in the beginning. If they say yes to you, something’s wrong. I’m not kidding. Nothing’s that simple or easy, so either run or get a good lawyer. ‘No’ is easy for people to say when they don’t understand and people never understand new things. They’re used to formulas. Often, they’re in the business of making money and doing things that are guaranteed. That’s nice but for many entrepreneurs, that’s not the right fit. I’ve always wanted to have the space to explore my ideas and I know, sometimes they’re going to be great and sometimes they’re going to stink but that’s all part of the process. I work with people who understand my business model and my creativity.