New in Town: Live Curly Live Free Salon

The Live Curly Live Free Salon is looking to offer an alternative and special treatment for people with curly hair across Tampa Bay.

Located in the Gulfport Art Village courtyard, Live Curly Live Free opened it's doors on Tuesday April 5^th.

With only one day at it's new location in Gulfport, Live Curly Live Free is already booked. Their first available evening and weekend appointments are nearly a month away, said Tiffany Anderson, owner of the Live Curly Live Free Salon.

Part of this can be attributed to Anderson's specialty of curly hair, which has clients traveling from around the country to see her.

“It wouldn't matter to me where Tiffany moved to, if she was out of state, I'd still go see her to get my hair done,” said Elizabeth Markie, Anderson's first customer at Live Curly Live Free.

Markie, who has been seeing Anderson at Beau Monde Salon for two years, had trouble taking care of her curly hair after moving to Florida.

“I've had naturally curly hair all my life and had disastrous haircuts in Florida before I met Tiffany,” Markie said.

Part of her skill in dealing with curly hair is because Anderson herself has curly hair.

“Living with curly hair and straightening for 18 years, I always thought that there had to be a better way,” Anderson said.

One of the techniques that Anderson discovered was cutting hair when it's dry, in contrast to the normal wet hair cut that straightens out much of the curls.

“When I started doing cutting curly hair, I thought that I'd try cutting it dry. I'm going to use my eyes instead of technical precision and do a visual cut. It turned out better than any other curly cut I've done,” Anderson said.

Anderson is largely self taught on how to treat curly hair, but has taken a class that followed some of the guidelines that she believed in.

“It wasn't so much of a learning experience, but more of a validation of what I was already doing,” Anderson said.

Beyond being a hairstylist, Anderson acts as an educator for people with curly hair. The website for Live Curly Live Free has been up since 2008 and has since become used as a method in different salons across the world for how to work with curly hair, Anderson said.

Keeping on the ideas of teaching what she started with the website, Anderson includes with every customer's first cut at Live Curly Live Free is a education session on their curly hair. During this time, Anderson goes over different products to use and products to avoid, like dehydrating sulphates and non-water soluble silicones, so people can continue to take of their hair after they leave the salon, Anderson said.

“I always thought that my struggles with curly hair were isolated. After starting the website, I realized that there needs (to be) a place just for curly hair because the techniques that work for straight just don't work for curly hair,” Anderson said.

Live Curly Live Free is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays. It's reccomended to make an appointment at (727) 424-7325.