This beautiful love story began with determination and trust. Because in interior design, human relationships — the chemistry between people — carry far more weight than you might think. That’s something I’ll always be grateful to Hair Cut Day and its owner for. You see, when we first visited the space, it was wrapped in vagueness; by then, it was already a hair salon, and its old solid-brick walls, painted white, stripped it of any emotional connection to the magic of the sense of touch, of textures. It was white, cold, timid, halfway between the dream of what it wanted to be and never was — the chronicle of a closure sinking into oblivion.

To be honest, five minutes into the visit we still didn’t know what the new space would look like — design is the fruit of a few weeks of work and a great deal of emotional connection. But we did know what it wouldn’t be; those white walls would give way to the one memory that would endure in the new HCD: its century-old walls, full of stories and memories of a better time.

Even so, this was not going to be the classic space where the centuries-old structure was simply left to be the protagonist. Colouring hair is an art form, with a great deal of creation, of a process of alchemy where the colourist’s hands make the result — and the new HCD was decidedly out to tell a story through interior design. The acid colours began to take shape: greens, reds, limes, a new take on the industrial concept, with an experimental yet super-refined air, with echoes of the ’70s. This space sounds melodically like “post rock,” where instrumental fusion and experimentation are very much present — for example, in those ultra-fine lines that the lime-coloured acrylics produce at their thinnest, that magical perception of a light illuminating them, even if it’s only the fruit of your imagination.

And this story wouldn’t have the sex appeal, nor the emotion it holds, without the meticulous lighting work carried out. Where the depth, the drama, the chiaroscuro or the minimal light at the hair-washing station invite you to introspection and to the pleasure of the sense of touch on your hair.