Lora, and the kit · Look Lora

First paid season, 2019

How it started

For six years I did hair and makeup at friends' and cousins' weddings around a day job, usually for a seat at the reception and a slice of cake wrapped in a serviette. In 2019 I took my first paid bookings under the name Look Lora.

Then most of the 2020 season was cancelled, one Saturday at a time. What kept the business alive were the small ones: courthouse mornings, garden ceremonies with twelve chairs, a bride and her sister in a kitchen with the window open. I rebuilt slowly from those, and it's why small ceremonies still have their own price today.

The south-easter

The wind

She comes up most afternoons from November.

Most summer afternoons the south-easter comes up, the one everyone here calls the Cape Doctor, and it has a habit of arriving at exactly the moment the photographer says right, everyone outside. I stopped fighting it years ago. I leave two face-framing pieces loose on purpose, because the wind is going to pull something out of your hair either way, and I would much rather it was something I chose, curled and know will fall well. I pin the veil comb to the anchor braid and never to loose hair, because loose hair lets go in a gust and a braid does not, and a veil travelling across a lawn on its own is not the photograph anyone wanted. In December I set makeup with a fine mist rather than powder, since powder in a dry wind sits on the skin like dust and a mist moves with it. None of this came from a course. I learned most of it on a Bloubergstrand lawn, watching one bride hold her veil down with both hands for twenty minutes while the mountain disappeared into cloud behind her, laughing in every single picture, and deciding on the drive home that the job was to make that kind of afternoon easier rather than pretend it wouldn't happen. These days I check the wind forecast for your venue before I check my own diary, which tells you something about my priorities, and possibly something about my diary.

The ceiling

Why ten faces is the ceiling

A face done in its proper 35 minutes holds. A face done in 20 because the morning slipped is the one that creases by the speeches, and it's always somebody's mother. Ten is the most Nomsa and I can do at the pace the chart asks for, so ten is where I stop, even when a bigger party asks very nicely.

It's also why I take one wedding a day. Nobody gets the leftover half of my morning.

One bag, nothing branded

The kit

Seven things I'd never arrive without. The drawing on the first page shows what they're for.

Folding chair Set at seated working height, so I'm level with your face, not stooping over it.
Daylight lamp Matched on the morning to the light coming through your window.
Steel pin tin Steel, with a lid that shuts properly.
Fabric brush roll Every brush washed and dried after each wedding, then rolled flat.
Small handheld fan For setting mist in December, and for brides who've just cried.
Blotting papers Two go into the touch-up pouch. The rest stay with me.
Spare veil comb For the day a comb snaps in the car on the way. It has happened once.

For parties over six faces

Nomsa

Nomsa joins me whenever a party is bigger than six faces. She works the bridesmaids' and mothers' chairs from the same chart I write for the bride, so the whole party looks like it belongs in one photograph. With her alongside, two chairs run at once and the ceiling becomes ten. She is calm in exactly the way a wedding morning needs. Put the number of faces in your first message to me and I'll tell you whether she's coming.