A veteran SF stylist with nearly two decades of experience specializing in curls and razor cuts is making waves by refusing to do it — and her reasoning is worth hearing out, even if you're not someone who typically wades into hair pricing discourse.
Her model is simple: a flat rate of $175 for everyone. If a client needs extra time, they book a consultation add-on. No texture surcharges. No sneaky upcharges based on how much hair you walked in with.
Her argument cuts (pun intended) in two directions. First, the practical: what actually takes longer with curly hair isn't the cut itself — it's the drying. And charging someone a premium because they're sitting under a hood dryer while you're in the back eating a snack? That's not exactly billable labor. Second, the structural: if your baseline pricing model assumes straight, fine, European-textured hair as the default, and everything else gets a surcharge, you've essentially built a pricing system that penalizes people for their natural hair texture. That's worth interrogating.
She's also come up with creative workarounds — dry cuts, wash-and-set options where clients return after styling with their own products (because, as she notes, curly-haired people generally know their curl patterns better than any stylist), and half-price tune-ups between full appointments.
Now, from a free-market perspective, stylists can charge whatever they want. That's their right, and clients can vote with their feet. Nobody's calling for price controls on blowouts. But there's a difference between defending someone's right to set prices and refusing to ask whether those prices reflect hidden assumptions baked into an industry standard.
The best markets work when consumers have information and alternatives. If more stylists adopted transparent flat-rate pricing, the ones charging $300+ for textured hair would have to justify the premium — or lose clients. That's not regulation. That's competition doing what it does best.
Sometimes the most liberty-minded thing you can do is question the default.
