TORRINGTON — There is an image on Amanda Castillo’s Instagram page, TheCurlorista, showing a female with frizzy hair and a caption that reads: “You simply cannot command every little thing. Your hair was set on your head to remind you of that.”
Does that necessarily mean Castillo desires girls to appear to her new Temple Soulon hair salon so she can enable them prevail over their unruly locks?
“No, not ever to defeat that, since trying to prevail over character is a losing recreation, all the time, just about every time,” she stated.
That is the essence of Castillo’s personal and professional philosophy. The identify, Temple Soulon, she said, implies she is furnishing a protected room, a salon for the soul.
“More than superficial attractiveness, this is really about inside natural beauty and illuminating the soul, versus just owning an exterior look,” she stated.
Castillo was born in New York Town and grew up in New Jersey. She realized she preferred to be a hair stylist considering the fact that she was a youthful woman.
“I was generally actively playing with people’s hair,” she mentioned. “I started out a minimal attractiveness club in fourth quality that would meet up with at recess. And it was usually a enjoyment way for me to make persons come to feel good.”
By the time she arrived at center faculty, she was examining component labels on hair items and conversing about hair styling with anybody who would listen. The oldest of 3 sisters, she would do her youthful sisters’ hair and talk to them to deliver their buddies more than so she could do theirs as effectively.
“By the time I was 13, maybe just about to be 14, 1 of my minor sisters’ close friends claimed, ‘Are you going to be a hairdresser when we grow up?’ And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re appropriate. That is a real job. Of study course, that is what I need to do.’”
She commenced functioning in salons when she was 17, she stated. She graduated from Paul Mitchell The School of North Haven in 2009 and worked in different salons in the New Haven region, calling herself “The Curlorista.”
“It’s a play on the words ‘curl,’ ‘color’ and ‘fashionista,’” she reported. “There was no sufficient position title for what I was performing with folks. At initial, it just started out because I desired an Instagram identify. I did not know what to simply call myself.”
But she commenced to see the beauty market as a much less-than-affirming force, just one that sends the concept that a lady needs to hide her flaws underneath makeup and straighten her hard-to-control curls. Castillo would somewhat intensify the attractiveness that currently is there, she reported. She also preferred to be equipped to devote extra time with clientele, not flit from one to a different and risk dropping a personal connection.
In 2017, she opened her initial salon, The Chrysalis, in Milford, which she explained as “a cozy, single-chair studio that was a area for metamorphosis.” She expanded the house and altered the identify to Temple Soulon in 2019, but in December of that calendar year she had to near because of to a bad website traffic incident.
Her restoration was sluggish but seemingly total, but the pandemic additional curtailed her reopening. She ultimately located a new place on Water Road in Torrington, the former home of the Torrington Natural beauty Academy.
“I just thought, what a best legacy. I get to carry on my tale and that of the metropolis and of this area of specialists,” she claimed.
Castillo’s longtime good friend Jaxi Zundell is her only stylist for now, and shares Castillo’s worry for constructing and affirming clients’ self-esteem.
“I grew up in the ’90s, and nobody was definitely exterior the box however,” Zundell reported. “I just type of generally felt like I never ever in good shape in. The very first time I ever coloured my hair at home, I made it as brilliant crimson as probable, and I just started out feeling more like myself. That variety of did it for me.”
She explained she reminds shoppers that hair is contaminants increasing out, “old vitality.”
“Whenever you get a haircut, as extensive as you get a little something you ended up on the lookout for, you are happy with the consequence,” Zundell explained. “Everyone kind of leaves emotion clean, right? You have that sensation of launch of that aged, the old information.”
Like Castillo, Zundell likes investing time with her shoppers.
“I believe that’s actually crucial, due to the fact I’ve labored at, you know, quickly-paced salons and you are zigzagging, and it’s like remaining a waitress … you might be attempting to keep in mind this for that particular person, this for that individual. … It is just not as particular,” she reported.
Temple Soulon is at 22A H2o St. and is open by appointment Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. For facts, phone 860-489-2298 or go to www.TempleSoulon.com. Come across Castillo’s Instagram web page @TheCurlorista.
