How to Explain Curly Hair at a Salon in Ho Chi Minh City

If your hair waves, curls, coils, or changes its mind halfway down the strand, a haircut in Ho Chi Minh City comes with one extra task your straight-haired friends never think about: explaining your hair to someone who may not see hair like it very often.

Here’s the plain reality. Most of the hair in this city’s salon chairs runs from straight to softly waved, which means the mental library a stylist builds from day-to-day work is stocked mostly with straight hair. Your job, as the person in the chair with curls, is to hand over the clearest possible picture of what your hair actually does. The good news: that’s a learnable skill, and preparing takes about ten minutes.

Why “curly” is too small a word

“Curly” has to cover an absurd range: a loose bend that only appears on humid afternoons, a defined S-wave, a spiral you could slide a finger through, a tight coil that springs back when you stretch it. One word, four completely different haircuts. And a single head rarely agrees with itself — plenty of people carry looser wave on top, stronger curl underneath, and a rebellious patch at the hairline doing something else entirely.

You may also know your hair by a number: 2b, 3a, and so on. Where that chart is common currency, it’s a handy shorthand. Its reach is uneven, though: in a salon where the chart isn’t part of everyday work, “3a” lands about as well as a clothing size from a foreign sizing system. Photos, on the other hand, are understood everywhere. So the working principle of this article is simple: describe a little, show a lot.

Four questions that say more than any label

Before your appointment, answer these four questions for yourself. Together they describe your hair better than any single word could.

1. What does it do when it’s fully dry and untouched? Wave, spiral, coil? Defined clumps or a soft haze? “Dry and left alone, it forms loose S-shapes that get tighter underneath” is a sentence any stylist can work with.
2. What does it do when it’s wet? Some hair goes nearly straight in the shower; some curls up tighter. This matters, because the hair in the chair and the hair you live with can be two different lengths.
3. Where does the volume live? Roots, mid-lengths, ends? One side more than the other? Point at the spot: “It expands here, from about ear level down.”
4. How does it change across a day? Flat in the morning and huge by evening? Defined until the first brush? In this climate, plenty of hair writes a morning version and an afternoon version of itself — say which version bothers you.

The strongest tool: a good-day photo and a bad-day photo

Words are a sketch; photos are the blueprint. Bring two sets:

• A good day: your hair doing the thing you’d like it to do more often. This shows the target.
• A bad day: frizz, collapse, the dreaded triangle, whatever your hair does when it wins. This shows the problem the cut needs to answer.

Phone photos are fine. Natural light, hair down, front and back. If you also have a picture of a cut you like on someone whose texture resembles yours, bring that too — a goal photo taken on straight hair asks the scissors for a result your curl may quietly renegotiate by morning.

Say how you dry it, before anyone lifts the scissors

The same cut can land very differently depending on what happens after the shower. Air-dried and scrunched, diffused upside down, blow-dried straight, rough-dried with just your hands, brushed through and blow-dried: each routine turns identical layers into a different final shape. So state your real routine, honestly, up front: “I air-dry and touch it as little as possible,” or “I blow-dry it straight for work most weeks.” Ask for a cut that fits the life your hair actually lives, and mention it if your weekday and weekend routines differ.

Two things to agree on before the first snip

1. Wet cut or dry cut? Both are legitimate methods with their own logic, and stylists differ in which they prefer for textured hair. What matters is that the two of you are picturing the same finish. A simple, friendly question does it: “Will you cut it wet or dry, and how will you check the final length?”
2. How much shrinkage are we expecting? Curly hair is longer wet than dry, and for some people the difference is several centimetres. Agree on length as it will sit when dry, using your body as the ruler rather than numbers: “When it’s dry and curling, I’d like it to sit at my collarbone.” That single sentence can head off the most common curly-hair surprise — a cut that looked right at the basin and rose several centimetres by dinner.

If the cut misses, turn it into data

Even with good preparation, a first cut in a brand-new stylist–client pairing can land a little off. That’s the nature of first attempts anywhere, and hair takes a session or two to explain itself. The most useful response is specifics instead of a verdict. “The length is right, but it expands at the ears.” “It looked great for a week, then the layers started separating.” “Next time, a bit more weight left underneath.” Sentences like these hand the stylist an exact correction, and the second cut starts from real information about your head rather than a first guess. A stylist who has heard specific feedback on your hair twice is working with a map. Give them the chance to draw it.

Bringing it to emo.

emo. Hair Salon is in District 7, near Crescent Mall in Phú Mỹ Hưng. Japanese and Vietnamese stylists both work here, and you can request a stylist by name. The four Japanese stylists each have at least nineteen years behind the chair.On the price list, JP and VN indicate which stylist you have booked. They have nothing to do with your own nationality.

Every tool in this article (the four questions, the two photos, the drying routine, the shrinkage conversation) works here in your own words: the team can help you in English, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean.

To book, call, message us on Zalo, or use the online booking page. Please note that the online booking page is in Japanese only.

• Phone: 0707 177 290
• Zalo: Message emo. on Zalo
• Online booking (Japanese only): Reservation page

emo. Hair Salon
14 Raymondienne, khu Starhill, phường Tân Mỹ, Quận 7, Ho Chi Minh City (near Crescent Mall, in Phú Mỹ Hưng)
Tue–Fri 9:00–19:00 (last cut 18:00) / Sat–Sun 9:00–18:30 (last cut 17:30) / Closed Mondays