From the Editor
We opened VOLUME because the salons we grew up in were quiet in the wrong way — mirrors like interrogation lamps, a magazine on your lap that nobody chose. So we made the magazine instead, and built the room around it.
Four years later the room is loud, the coffee is good, and there are nine people behind the mirror who will tell you the truth about your hair before they touch it. That is the whole editorial policy.
Renata Solís
Founder & Creative Director
002
The Hair Issue
In this issue
014
Departments
from $2,400 · with Renata, Uriel
from $900 · with Dani, Marco
from $650 · walk-ins Tuesdays
from $480 · every stylist
from $1,100 · after any lift
All prices in Mexican pesos and quoted before the consultation, never after. See the full price list
The Feature — p.014
One writer goes from box-dye black to the palest blonde of her life, and files an honest account of every hour of it.
There is a moment, somewhere around the ninety-minute mark, when you stop being a person with plans for the evening and become a project. I had arrived at eleven with fifteen years of box dye on my head and a photograph of someone else's hair on my phone. Renata looked at the photo for a long time, then at my roots, then back at the photo, and said the sentence that every colourist in this city should be legally required to say: “We can get there. Not today.”
What follows is not a transformation story. It is a logistics story. Bleach is chemistry and chemistry takes the time it takes, and the single most useful thing VOLUME does is refuse to pretend otherwise. The consultation is twenty minutes and free, and it exists almost entirely so that nobody is surprised at hour four.
By hour three the room had filled. A woman two chairs down was getting a fringe cut and narrating a breakup. Someone's dog had been permitted. The playlist had drifted from something ambient into something considerably less ambient, and Marco was arguing, loudly and with feeling, about whether a shag counts as a haircut or a lifestyle. This is the part the before-and-afters never show you: six hours is a long time to sit somewhere, and where you sit matters as much as who is holding the foil.
At hour five the toner went on and the room went briefly quiet in the way rooms do when something is about to work. At hour six I looked up and did not recognise the person in the mirror, which is the point, and then recognised her immediately, which is also the point. Good colour doesn't replace you. It just gets the light to agree with you.
Behind the mirror
Trained in Mexico City and London, back home for good. Renata built VOLUME around one rule — say the true thing about someone's hair before you pick up a brush. Specialises in corrections other people have declined.
Ask her about: going lighter without losing the length.
Curly specialist. Cuts dry, always, and will talk you out of a fringe if the fringe is a bad idea.
Does the shows, does the shags, has strong opinions about scissors and shares them freely.
The patient one. Six-hour appointments are his natural habitat. Never rushes a lift, ever.
Runs the bridal desk and the playlist. Has never once been late to a wedding, which is a record.
Back issues — the lookbooks
Drag or scroll
The Floor
Saturdays get loud. We are not going to apologise for it.
Saturday,
2:40 pm
Someone's
birthday, again
Overheard on the floor
“Cut it. I'll deal with the consequences.”
“He's not coming to the wedding, so.”
“Is that my song?”
“I want it shorter than that. Shorter. Shorter.”
“Cut it. I'll deal with the consequences.”
“He's not coming to the wedding, so.”
“Is that my song?”
“I want it shorter than that. Shorter. Shorter.”
Correspondence
I brought in a photo of a haircut I had in 2016 and Dani gently explained that the haircut was not the problem, 2016 was. She was right. I have never looked better.
N. Guzmán, Providencia
Six hours with Uriel and he did not once make me feel stupid for having dyed it myself. That is worth more than the colour, and the colour is extremely good.
A. Ferrer, Chapalita
Booked a blowout, stayed two hours, made a friend, got invited to a party. I am not sure this is technically a salon.
M. Ríos, Americana
My daughter's wedding, eight of us, one morning, zero drama. Lu ran it like a military operation with better music.
C. Salcedo, Zapopan
They quoted me $2,400 and charged me $2,400. In this economy. In this industry.
P. Ibarra, Santa Tere
I have been going for three years and I still don't know what half the products are called. The hair is great though. The hair is always great.
J. Aceves, Moderna
Detach and return
A standing appointment. One chair, every six weeks, held in your name — plus the issue, the invites, and first refusal on Saturday slots.