I’ve gone my entire life without a drastic hair color change. Since birth, I’ve had dark brown-almost-black curls. In middle school, my Rihanna obsession peaked, prompting me to attempt to replicate her Loud-era fire hydrant hair. But since I was using drugstore box dye on my virgin hair, it was a deep auburn that you could only really notice in the sun. After a short stint with a sandy brown weave, I now stick to jet black hair. At each of these aesthetic junctures, my appearance was top of mind, but apparently I should also be considering my aura. During a TikTok wormhole, I came across a video of hair colorist and ‘healing hairdresser’ Roxie Darling explaining the concept of vibrational beauty.
“A vibrational beautician is somebody who specializes in considering how the aura changes when we change the way our hair looks,” the Hudson, New York-based hairstylist explains in one clip. “When we change the way we look, we send a different vibrational message to those around us.”
When it comes to the mind-body connection, we tend to overlook our hair, but it’s a critical piece of the puzzle, Darling tells Coveteur. The idea of adding an auric element to her hair appointments first came to her around 2014. "I was groomed to be a great colorist—I was doing celebrity work, editorial, advertising, and creative direction. That was fine, but it was really sucking my soul,” she says. In the day-to-day of her busy career as a color tech for brands like Bumble and bumble and Hairstory, she began thinking about what she really loved about her career. “My joy is in helping people find a look that feels great for them. I've always been pretty spiritual and into color as a healing modality. It’s clear how it affects people and affects their energy,” she explains via Zoom. “[Hair color] affects how people receive my clients and how they affect other people.”
Photo: Angelina Dreem
Photo: Angelina Dreem
While working as a color tech, Darling also began studying tarot, biodynamics, reiki, and astrology. “I've gone through a lot of different trainings to understand people on an energetic level. All of that has really informed me coming back to my craft and being able to offer these deeper experiences and investments because getting your hair done is an investment,” she adds. Channeling these healing modalities internally, she says, helped her to give clients a more holistic experience during their treatments. In essence, she was helping clients find colors that suited them energetically, not just aesthetically.
“I really believe that everything we experience comes through in our hair. The same way that our organs process what we put in our body and that comes out in our hair, skin and nails, I believe that every single energetic encounter we have also comes through and is processed by us then comes out in our hair,” Darling explains. Today, she's a color specialist at Creem Studio in Hudson. When a client arrives for an appointment, her intuition kicks in very quickly. “The second someone enters the room, I can read them. For many years I worked with tarot cards, crystals and lights and it was all of my little tools. But my practice has developed to really me being present with a person and allowing myself to feel everything that they're bringing with them.” A lot of times, she says, it just comes down to asking clients the right questions.
I couldn’t make it to an IRL reading with Roxie since she’s based in New York and I’m in Toronto, so my reading was entirely remote. (She’s going to be offering remote services soon, she says.) Ahead of our Zoom, I snapped an aura photo at Rose Aura in Toronto and emailed a scan of it to Roxie. Here's what she picked up on.
My Reading
An aura photo taken in August 2022.
Photo by Rose Aura.
Based on my aura polaroid, zodiac sign (I'm a Cancer), and general vibe, Darling suggested that I try a soft, subtle balayage. "In your aura picture, you had some nice green on the right side, so you have big heart reception energy coming your way. You're a Cancer and a writer, so this is all telling me that like there's a part of you that's really coming into yourself," she said.
Per Darling, the colors in my aura indicated a degree of softness in my personality and she thinks that my next hair color should follow suit. "Cancers can tend to be really inside themselves, even though they're very social and caring creatures. When you have those colors in your aura, that means there's something really soft; your vibe isn't too crazy. I think some really beautiful, soft painted highlights in your hair would work. You have curly hair and that is a statement in itself, so we don't have to push that," she added. "As much as Cancers have fierce protectress energy, they're not necessarily trying to be the center of attention. Balayage just kind of kisses your aura and puts a tiny bit of light there. It's not a huge departure from who you are. It’s putting a bow on it or adding that like satin finish."
The verdict was what she refers to as 'rich girl hair', which I'm not mad at. "The word luxury keeps coming to me," she explains. "It's a little bit like rich girl hair, you know what I mean?" Needless to say, this fall I'm breaking up with my go-to black box dye and getting a color that I'm more energetically aligned with.