Meet Your Stylist: Chelsea Styrk

In the spirit of the “Ten Year Challenge” that has been going around social media recently, I decided to talk to Chelsea Styrk, whose decade long career has taken her all over the east coast. A stylist at J. Bauman Salon since January 2016, Chelsea stumbled upon the hair industry whilst in pursuit of another dream.

“I originally went to school in Tampa for fashion design, but I wasn’t in love with the culture and people in that industry,” She remembers, “I’d always loved doing hair, but didn’t think I could make a career of it.” That is, until, a coincidental meeting at Gallery Bistro, the restaurant where Chelsea was a server while she was in school.

“The president of the Paul Mitchell school in Tampa, and some of the educators, were seated in my section, and as I talked to them more, they convinced me to come into the school for a tour, and that was it. I dropped out of fashion design school during Winter break.”

From there, Chelsea graduated from Paul Mitchell in 2008, and started her first stylist job at Do or Dye Hair Salon and Tattoo Parlor in 2009. Though her career was off to a great start, Chelsea missed New England, where she had spent most of her childhood. So, in 2011, she packed up and moved to Rhode Island, where she built a successful business for herself at La La Luxe Salon. During this time, Chelsea found her place in the beauty industry, and began to specialize in blondes, as well as more complicated color processes, that stylists refer to as “color corrections.”

In 2015, news that her eldest brother would be getting out of the Marines, and him and his wife would be buying a house in Orlando, along with the realization that her parents were getting older, Chelsea made the difficult decision to move back to Florida, and essentially start back at square one with her career. In preparation, she researched salons in Orlando that used the kind of color with which she was familiar, and came across J. Bauman in her searching. By January of 2016, Chelsea had moved her life to Orlando, and had become a part of the J. Bauman team. Now, with three years under her belt in Orlando, and a decade in the business, Chelsea loves what she does more than ever.

“I love to make people feel good about themselves; I got out of the fashion industry because people were constantly down on themselves about how they looked, and I’m glad I can have the opposite effect now.”

See more of Chelsea's work on her Instagram profile. Follow her here: @cstyrkhair