I’m Elise Marchetti, and here’s why ChicMane exists
I write ChicMane the way I used to talk to clients in the chair: what the cut is called, what it needs from your texture, and what it costs you on a Tuesday morning.
Where this started
I was nineteen in 2009, sweeping hair off the floor at Bishop Salon on NE Alberta Street in Portland, Oregon. I’d dropped out of a nursing program at Portland Community College six weeks into my second semester, mostly because I couldn’t stop watching the colorist two chairs down mix formulas like she was solving an equation. I asked her one question about lift and developer and she handed me a broom and told me to keep asking questions.
My first real tool wasn’t scissors. It was a secondhand Fromm shear I bought with two paychecks, because the salon owner told me I couldn’t touch a client’s hair with the dull practice pair anymore. I still have that shear. It doesn’t cut well now, but it was the first thing in the industry that was mine.
Twelve years behind the chair
I stayed at Bishop for four years, then moved to a color-focused studio called Hearth & Honey in the Hawthorne district, where I spent the next eight learning how fine, wavy, and curly hair actually behave under foil, under a diffuser, under humidity that Portland has plenty of. By 2021 I’d done color correction on hair that had been bleached three times in a year, cut curly hair dry more times than I can count, and answered the same six questions from clients over and over: what do I ask for, how do I keep this at home, why does my hair do this and not what the salon photo showed.
Those repeated questions are the reason ChicMane exists. I kept a notebook of what I told clients, cut by cut, texture by texture, and in 2021 I started turning that notebook into articles instead of just chair-side advice.
Who this is for, and what it refuses to do
ChicMane is for women choosing and styling their own hair, not for other stylists trading technique, and not for people who want a fantasy transformation with no maintenance attached. Every piece names the actual cut, the texture it works on, and what it takes to keep it looking right on a normal morning, not the morning right after a salon blowout.
I refuse to publish a style without saying what upkeep it demands. If a color needs a toner appointment every five weeks or the money isn’t worth it for you, I say that. If a cut only looks good with a diffuser and fifteen minutes you don’t have, I say that too. I’d rather talk someone out of a look than let them find out at 7 a.m. on a Tuesday.
How I check what I publish
Every cut and color piece on ChicMane, I’ve either done in the chair myself or I’ve watched a colorist I trained with do it, and I ask them to review the draft before it goes up. For texture guidance I test the styling routine on my own hair or on a friend’s for at least two weeks before I write about it, because a technique that works once in a photo isn’t the same as one that survives a school-morning routine.
When a reader emails to say a technique didn’t work for their hair, I go back and test it on that texture specifically before I decide whether to correct the article or add a note about who it doesn’t suit. I keep a running list of those corrections, and it’s longer than I’d like, but it’s honest.
What a normal morning has to survive
I write with a specific person in mind: someone standing at a mirror with ten minutes, a round brush or none at all, and hair that didn’t come with a stylist attached. That’s who I was cutting hair for the whole twelve years, and it’s who I’m still writing for now.
If an article on ChicMane tells you a cut works on wavy hair, I mean it works on the wave pattern you actually have, dried the way you actually dry it, not the way it looked on a diffused, product-heavy demo head under salon lighting. That’s the standard I held myself to at Bishop and at Hearth & Honey, and it’s the one I hold ChicMane to now.
Want to reach me?
I read every message myself, whether it’s a question about a specific cut, a color that went sideways, or something an article got wrong. You can find me on Pinterest or send a direct message through the contact page.
Business and collaboration inquiries go to [email protected].
Ask me anything about your hair. — Elise