Millennium Styling Salon: Hair Room
By Michelle Troutman

While pregnant with her son, Shelley Lane spent time thinking over what she wanted to do with her life. With nine years of experience as a stylist, she decided she was ready to open her own salon after he was born. She named it Millennium because he was born the year before, in 2000, and "it just had a good little ring to it."

As a child, she thought she would grow up to become a veterinarian. In her teens, she discovered she didn't want to work at a desk, and wasn't sure she could handle dealing with sick animals. She gave hairdressing a try the summer after high school graduation, so if she didn't like it, she could go to college in the fall.

At the former Maine State Academy of Hair Design on Appleton St., she found she liked hairdressing and doing finger waves, "which was most people's torture in beauty school."

Lane describes her own hair as straight on top and curly on the bottom. “My whole family has curly hair, and I'm the one with the half and half. It's funny."

The one room hair house provides a more personal space for Lane and for the client, which she believes helps set her salon apart. "A lot of my clients say, 'This is just me time. It's just me and you.'”

"When you're in that close of a contact with a person, you're a neutral sounding board,” she adds. “You hear a lot of things, and take on a lot of people's emotions. It's a very emotionally-driven job, for sure."

Lane enjoys a flexible schedule, with no set times, adjusting her hours for the needs of clients, closing Sundays. "I can go to my son's activities, and if there's something important going on in my life, my boss isn't going to tell me 'No,'” she says with a laugh. “But it also comes with a commitment that I just can't go with what I want. Sometimes I have to do the things I don't want to do, like spending Sunday afternoon doing paperwork, as opposed to doing the fun things in life, so it is a balance."

She also does manicures and pedicures, leaving that to nail technicians, when she employs them.

She finds that the best way to make the client happy with his or her style is to talk to him or her, making sure that she understands what clients want. "If you find out what they're looking for, and you find out you're on the same page, usually the end result is a positive one."

"More often than not, people want hair that's manageable, and healthy. They're not so much going for what everybody else is doing any more. “

Lane sells the Matrix color and perm line, Matrix Biolage, Paul Mitchell, and the Chi line for hair loss, products she believes work consistently and dependably, having used some of them for several years.

She's most proud of having become a state board examiner. "That's just a little side thing that I do, and I'm pretty proud of that. There's a lot of responsibility that comes with it."

Lane keeps up with training twice a year, required for her instructor's license and NIC certification, and to stay on top of new ideas and techniques for her clients.

As for salon products vs. their over-the-counter counterparts, Lane believes store bought treatments aren't necessarily strong enough to produce the colors people want, and can cause more damage because they don't have the same level of quality in their ingredients.

For those who suffer from dry hair from lack of natural oils, over washing, or from chemical damage, Lane recommends in-salon deep conditioning treatments, which have smaller molecules and can more fully penetrate hair.

She credits support from her husband, parents, and the KVCOG, and the location for her success, having invested a lot of time, emotions, and money in the business. "I try really hard to make everyone feel like this is their place, too, and that they're part of my life. I think that helps."

Millennium Styling Salon at 36 Temple Street is open five days a week, by appointment, and is closed Sundays: (207) 872-6700.

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