My first salon opened in Studio City in 2015. That place has a completely different part of my heart. I've had clients there for years. I've watched people get married, have babies, change careers, go through breakups, come back after moving away. You end up knowing a lot about someone's life when they're sitting in your chair every few weeks.
I'm not leaving that behind.
Now I'm just doing it from two continents.
There are days when I wake up in Amsterdam and I'm answering something happening in LA. Then I'm back in Los Angeles and my head is already thinking about Amsterdam. My suitcase is never really put away. The weather is usually wrong for whatever I packed.
It's chaotic, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
Amsterdam has meant so much to me for a long time. Sebastian and I fell in love here. I came here before I ever imagined having a salon here could be a reality, before I thought about buying a home here, before Amsterdam was anything more than a place I loved coming back to.
Somehow Amsterdam went from being a place I visited to building a second life.
Eventually it became more.
Now I'm bringing something I've spent years building in Los Angeles to a city that has already given so much to me.
That's the part that makes me emotional.
Because this isn't just another salon for me.
It's my first one in Europe.
It's a chance to take my vision somewhere completely new and see what happens when you put it in a place that already feels personal. The way I see color. The way I design a space. The way I want clients to feel when they walk through the door.
It's about bringing my work, my eye, my style and a whole lot of myself to a place that has been part of my story for years.
The Building Already Knew What It Wanted to Be
The funny thing is, so much of this move to Amsterdam has felt like that.
We keep finding ourselves drawn to things before we understand why.
When we found the building on Laurierstraat, we didn't know anything about its history. We just walked in and immediately felt something. We loved the corner, the windows, the natural light, the feeling of the space. There was no logical explanation for it.
We just knew.
We didn’t choose the building because of its history. We had no idea there even was history.We weren't trying to recreate something that had been there before.
It turns out the building had already decided what it wanted to be seventy-something years before I ever walked in.
And then we found the black-and-white photograph during the intense remodel.
It's from 1954.
The same building. Same corner. Same address.
I remember staring at the photograph and thinking, How is this even possible?
More than 70 years earlier, there had been a salon in that exact same corner. Women sitting underneath those old gigantic dome dryers, getting their hair done, having conversations, going about their lives.
And now, somehow, I'm here doing the same thing.
Out of all the buildings we could have chosen in Amsterdam, we somehow ended up in one that had already been a salon more than 70 years ago.
A salon in 1954.
A salon again in 2026.
A different time. A different generation. A different world. A completely different salon.
But the same corner.
That felt pretty special.
And honestly, the more I think about it, the more the whole thing feels like it fits.
Maybe that's what has made this whole move feel so strange and special to me. So many of the things that brought us here made sense only after we said yes to them.
We felt them first, and understood them later.
A Grand Opening
The opening night was when the whole thing finally felt real.
People came from Germany. From the UK. Some came from the US. Friends, clients, people from the industry.
I remember the feeling of looking around the room and feeling proud of what I had started.
Not too long ago there was no salon in this room.
Now people are sitting on the sofas. Taking pictures. Looking at the color bars. Touching things we spent months selecting. It all transformed from the vision in my head into an actual room full of people.
Ursula Puchhammer, Brand & Digital Communications Manager EMEA at JOICO, even made it, which meant a lot to me. It felt like a continuation of the relationship I've spent years building with JOICO, as their Artistic Director and Brand Ambassador, and now bringing that partnership to Amsterdam with a dedicated JOICO color bar section in the salon.
After everyone left, I couldn't get that photograph out of my head.
The women in the image had no idea of the building's future.
Nor did I.
The photograph now resides in my salon. Sometimes I look at it and think about how strange it is that we ended up in this building with the perfect light, space and location—and only afterward learned that someone had been doing what we're doing here more than 70 years ago.
Maybe that is why it feels right.
I believed I had opened my first European salon.
I had no idea it was now a part of its history.
Now, after so many obstacles, I get to do what I came all this way to do.
Somehow, We Came Full Circle
Opening this salon meant admitting to myself that I was actually doing this. Moving across the world. Running a business in Amsterdam while still having a salon and loyal clients in Los Angeles. Building a home here at the same time.
There wasn't really a backup plan.
There was a vision.
And then there was a lot of figuring it out as we went.
Was I scared?
Absolutely.
Did everything go according to plan?
Not even close.
There were setbacks. There were days when the renovation felt endless. There were moments when I wondered what the hell I'd gotten myself into.
There were tears. Plenty of them
But I kept going.
I think that's something I've learned about myself over the years. I don't necessarily need to know exactly how something is going to work before I start. Sometimes I just need to believe strongly enough in what I'm trying to build that I'll figure out the rest along the way.
If there's something you really want to build, don't let not knowing exactly how stop you from starting. You don't always need a perfect plan. Sometimes you just need enough belief to take the first step.
I start taking clients at the Amsterdam salon in October. I can't wait.
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