When it comes to looking your best, the one feature that has the most instant effect on your appearance is the hair on your head.
Perhaps because of that, it’s difficult to trust just anyone to trim and tease those precious locks. So for some people the client-hairstylist relationship is a loyal one, especially because body image and a sharp pair of scissors are involved.
Leila Vea Lewis knows a thing or two about this. Two years ago, Lewis moved from New York City to Nipomo, where she now runs the LVL Salon, which opened in March.
Lewis’ background includes years of working in the fast-paced and ultra-chic hair fashion industry of NYC. There, she studied and apprenticed under the auspices of late hairstylist and businessman Vidal Sassoon, known for his precise geometric and stylish haircuts, like the bob cut, as well as iconic styles that defined the images of model Twiggy and actress Nancy Kwan.
Lewis’ story starts in her hometown of Santa Maria. After high school, she left for San Francisco. Then in May of 2001, at just 19 years old, she moved to NYC. Living just south of Halston Street in Manhattan, Lewis waited tables and did freelance work in cosmetics.
She enrolled in the Aveda Institute, where she studied for nine months, but even after graduation she continued to wait tables.
However, the course of her life changed after watching a Vidal Sassoon demonstration, which prompted her to apply to the Sassoon Academy.
It was a tough school to get into, according to Lewis, but she got in as an apprentice after months of persistence. Things weren’t exactly smooth sailing from there. Lewis described it as extremely demanding work and a constant hustle for clientele, despite the recognition and street visibility she had with a name such as Sassoon’s.
“They’re not there to build your ego, that’s for sure,” Lewis told the Sun. “You need the most difficult clients in your chair, so you can handle anybody.”
At the academy, she learned techniques that would set her apart from other stylists, like the delicate skill of using scissors for cutting hair—no clippers.
Her intensive training paid off though. Just two years after joining Sassoon, Lewis got to work for a themed runway presentation that included 10 male and female models.
The Sassoon job came with its ups and downs, and a few hiccups, but her work began to help her earn unique experiences. Much of Lewis’ work at Sassoon centered on highly creative, avant-garde hairstyles, helping to shape her reputation as a stylist. She also gained plenty of experience for her work with New York Fashion Week.
One of her most significant client experiences came when she befriended the personal assistant for Yoko Ono—the widow of John Lennon of The Beatles—and became the widow’s hairstylist. Ono was a regular client, and Lewis came to her apartment at The Dakota every three weeks for five years. According to Lewis, one of Ono’s favorite haircuts is the pixie cut.
Lewis’ time in NYC wasn’t all about hair. The city shaped her in other ways as well. One of her most significant experiences there was waiting tables at Yaffa Café in Manhattan’s East Village the night of 9/11. She remembers arriving to work just as the plane hit the second tower at the World Trade Center, and the plume of dust spreading throughout the streets of the city after the towers came down.
It was a surreal experience for Lewis, she said. The restaurant stayed open the entire night and she continued waiting tables as people covered in dust straggled into the restaurant—not just for the food but for the free-flowing drinks at the bar where many found temporary solace from the trauma experienced that day, according to Lewis.
“Everybody was freaking out,” Lewis said, as she described the scene going from chaotic to eerily quiet. “People looked like zombies.”
Lewis eventually returned to her roots in the Santa Maria Valley in August 2014 to raise a family with her husband and two children. She said she misses NYC, especially the food and the diversity, but she doesn’t miss the crowds or the subway system.
Her salon is located at 229 W. Tefft St. located in the back corner of the Visitor’s Center building in Nipomo. She’s open Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Saturdays by appointment only. She does full-service hair care for men and women at her salon. Lewis has a staff that in addition to herself includes a full-time stylist and two part-timers, and she said she only hires the best.
“Now that I started this, I want to have stylists with advanced education,” she said. “I want to be the best, the best that I can be.”
For more information or to make an appointment, call 723-5200, and visit Lewis’ website lvlsalon.com. See her work on Facebook and Instagram at @lvlsalon.
Highlights
The holidays are approaching and many people do their shopping online. A free live-streaming workshop in Lompoc organized by experts from Google and the Small Business Administration shows business owners how to create a profile listing on Google to help with advertising on the internet. The Get Your Business on the Map event is hosted by the Lompoc Valley Chamber of Commerce from 10 to 11:30 a.m. on Oct. 26 on the second floor of the chamber headquarters located at 111 South I St. For more information, call 736-4567.
Staff Writer David Minsky wrote this week’s Biz Spotlight. Information should be sent to the Sun via fax, email, or mail.
This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 6, 2016.