Hairstory – Candy Shaw

About the Author

Candy Shaw literally grew up in the beauty business as the daughter of former world-champion competition-hairdresser Jamison Shaw. Trained in Paris, Candy’s been a French Cutter and Balayage Highlighter her entire life. The world’s foremost authority on balayage education, Candy teaches a fast, efficient, no-nonsense method of hair painting. Candy runs three companies.  Jamison Shaw Hairdressers, a fifty-year-young, third-generation, salon in Atlanta, where she personally sees up to thirty-five guests each day.  An Academy specializing in balayage education. And SUNLIGHTS Balayage, the makers and purveyors of the world’s leading balayage products and education, including THE BALAY BOX® and SUNLIGHTS Lightener®.

I was raised in the beauty industry. My mother was a make-up artist and my father, Jamison Shaw, was a former world-champion competition hairdresser. He was the first American to win hairdressing’s Grand World Supreme Championships–the Olympics of Hairdressing, in Amsterdam in the 1960’s. He brought the trophy home to America with great fanfare and was featured on the Ed Sullivan Show and in Time Magazine. Until then, the centuries old honor had only been bestowed upon Europeans.

When I was a young girl, my parent’s house guests were men like Vidal Sassoon, Paul Mitchell and Horst Rechelbacher (AVEDA’s founder). In fact, when I was small I used to play on Paul Mitchell’s Hawaiian awapuhi farms. As a girl, I used to stay up late, well past my bedtime, and listen to their stories. My mother would put me to bed and I’d sneak back downstairs, hide and listen some more. I learned a lot from these men. Probably the most important thing was to dream big! You see my dad grew up on a farm and had an eighth-grade education. Like him, I too never went to college. In fact, I never even went to beauty school. I traded haircuts for math homework to graduate high school. But if there was one thing I was always good at, it was dreaming big!