Just a few years ago Cheryl McMillan lost her daughter, Brittney Redd, to cancer. While her daughter was going through chemotherapy they had to struggle just to find the right style of hairpieces that would work the best. It was then that she made her mom promise that when she opened up a salon of her own that she’d help individuals suffering from alopecia find hairpieces that suited them, reports the Iowa City Press-Citizen. Four years later with her own salon open for business, she is doing just that.
McMillan, who originally is from Burlington, began cutting hair when she was 9, learning from her jack-of-all-trades mother, Dorothy Cratton, who often would serve as an at-home stylist for friends and neighbors. Later in life, while working as an assistant manager at an Iowa City grocery store that was closing, McMillan decided to go to La’James to earn her license.
When the flood swept through in June 2008, McMillan was styling hair at a studio along First Avenue in Coralville, where she had worked the previous six years. McMillan, who worked up until an hour before being told she had to evacuate the building, managed to get most of her equipment out, but floodwaters left her without a place to practice her trade.
With other displaced stylists cutting hair out of their homes after the flood, she considered herself fortunate when her friend, Lauren Foraker, offered her space to work in her Iowa City salon, Hair on Highland.
A few months later, McMillan stopped for lunch on Boyrum Street, and trying the wrong door by accident, she stumbled into an empty storage space adjacent to Big Ten Rentals. In March 2009, after months of planning and construction, she opened Textures there.
McMillan now has clients from all over Eastern Iowa suffering from alopecia, the clinical term for hair loss, who visit her salon and who have had trouble finding the right wigs elsewhere. She said that her experience during her daughter’s battle with cancer has allowed her to understand the trauma people with the condition are suffering.
Finding the right look for a person is the most gratifying part of her work, she said.
“You can see their face just light up, and their husband or daughter that is with them really like it and encourage them,” McMillan said. “It’s a great feeling, it truly is. I think my daughter would be happy.”
Photo by geishaboy500