By Intentionalist — July 16, 2024

Nestled in Seattle’s Madison Valley, Coven Salon is a haven, celebrating individuality and natural beauty. Owner and stylist Alexis Robinson has built this enchanting space to heal the traumas often inflicted upon those curly hair and to make everyone feel welcome. 

With a team of meticulously trained, versatile stylists and a passion for curl care, Coven has earned a devoted following. Step into the world of Coven Salon, where magic happens, and everyone leaves feeling celebrated and confident. This is no ordinary salon – it’s a gathering place that will transform your perspective on hair care and make you feel truly seen.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

Tell us about the journey of Coven Salon, which recently celebrated 10 years in business!
We started on a tiny spot on 24th in the Montlake neighborhood, and we moved over to Madison Valley in September of 2019. We were pretty crammed into that space, so it was a big deal for us to expand. At the time, we were six people crammed into a four person space and on top of each other. But the gift of that (and the curse of that) was that we moved in 2019 – when 2020 hit, we luckily had more space, so we could survive through the pandemic. 
 
I feel very fortunate that we got to join this community in this neighborhood before the pandemic. We’ve seen a lot of change. We’ve seen a lot of businesses come and go.
 
It’s not lost on me that we’re located on the corner of MLK on Madison.  This is an important intersection in Seattle. So I feel honored to be here, and I’m just glad that I’m glad that we get to stay standing.
 
 
What’s the inspiration behind the name, Coven Salon? 

It came from the idea of a band of like-minded individuals. It was kind of ahead of the whole witchy movement, since we were established in 2014. But what a gift that everybody was digging into their witchcraft, because here we are, ready to support us all!  

 
You always have the best artwork on the walls, and it’s constantly changing.

I love being able to feature local artists. We don’t take a commission – I’m not trying to make money off them. I really want to be able to host a space that people can feel and celebrate and show their artwork. So I feel really lucky to get to do that. I’m glad to have the home to do so.

We also have a tarot reader once a week. Their name is Rey. They’re fantastic and incredibly intuitive. 
 
We are hosting free haircuts for LGBTQIA humans next weekend, and those spots are already full. We are gonna extend Pride Month for as long as we can! And we’re going to do Bumbershoot this year, which I’m really excited about. We’ll be doing tinsel strands and updos and space buns and glitter hair and some hand painted wafts. It’s gonna be amazing, be sure to come by! 
 
Could you tell us more about your personal journey as a stylist? 
I got my start in Seattle at Vain Beauty World, owned by Victoria Gentry. It was an amazing spot to get my sea legs in Seattle. Very alternative hair. She really gave me a road map of how it’s done here in Seattle.
 
I branched out sort of on my own with two of my compadres, Jenny Slay and Emily Hartl, and we opened Coven Salon.
 
In terms of my personal journey, I am a multiracial person who moved around a lot growing up. I know what otherness feels like, and I wanted to create a space as intentionally as I possibly could to heal, train, and uplift as many stylists as I can.
 
We all know what it feels like to be othered at some point, and being a weird little black kid from a bunch of different places in the US, I know what it’s like to walk in a salon and have somebody make direct eye contact with you and be like, “oh no”, when they see you coming through the door. My goal was to create a space where nobody would feel that way.
 
I think it’s really important to raise stylists that are multifaceted. Knowing how to do one thing is great. But I think that in order to be a well-rounded team, you need somebody who knows how to do everything. And I pride myself on having a very versatile staff.
 

I’m not the right fit for you, I want to be sure that somebody is. While it is impossible to make everybody feel perfectly comfortable at all times, it is highly important to me to try, and to learn and to listen. The beauty industry thrives on the otherness of others, and I want to be the antithesis of that. I want people to feel safe and comfortable.

 
Coven Salon has become known as the go-to for curly hair. How did that happen?

I think that a lot of curly-haired people have experienced a lot of hair trauma. When I was growing up, I would get my hair cut, and then go home and wet it and start over.

The goal was to never let anybody feel like they had to do that. I just had a new client today and she was like, “I’ve never not gone home and started over.”

I think the reason why we’re successful is because hopefully we’ve listened. I’ve heard so many people say, “I didn’t like my hair. I didn’t know it could do this. I thought it wasn’t good hair.” We have a versatile team of people that can show you how to wear your hair in it’s natural state and still get the desired effect that you want.

It’s also great being in 2024 because there is more confidence around that. Frizz is not the devil. We need to celebrate our natural hair textures a lot more. I just feel grateful that I get to work with so many different types of hair. I get bored when I’m just doing the same thing all day, every day. So the more the merrier.
 
I know from experience that you are pretty booked up, so how does someone get an appointment at Coven? 

I’m not gonna lie, we are pretty booked, but it is absolutely worth the wait – I think that it is important to wait for the stylist that you love. I don’t think you should settle and go somewhere else and then be disappointed, and then come here and expect us to fix it.

It’s ok, just wait your turn. You should get the luxury experience that you want – and we have cancellations all the time. Get on a cancellation list. Plan ahead if you can, but if you don’t know what your life looks like, be a cancellation list person. We can also help you plan what your next year of appointments should look like.
 
What should someone expect from their first appointment?

I usually encourage people to come in with your hair styled most like what you would normally look like in the world. So come in with your hairstyle down and dry – no four-day ponytails!

What we do is a three-step process. We start dry, which we kind of refer to as a “rough draft”. That helps with people who have a lot of curl trauma because you can see how much we’re taking off. As you know, when your hair is wet, it just shrinks right back up. So we like to start it dry first.

Then we get you shampooed and conditioned, then we come back and we finish the haircut when it’s wet. We connect the dots. Then we usually take you back to the shampoo bowl. We rinse out all that shrapnel that we’ve been working with and then we put in your products and we style you up and we usually place you under the dryer for a couple of minutes because we want to simulate an air dry and that’s the quickest way to get those roots really dry.

If you have a lot of hair, it takes forever for your roots to dry. Curly hair needs a lot of hydration. So water is key, which is why we keep adding water to it.

Then we diffuse you the rest of the way. The goal is to send you out into the world in the best version of yourself. We never want anybody to feel like they need to go home and start over. So you should be able to leave looking better than you do coming in. That is the number one goal of all of our services.
 
What are some of your favorite businesses in the Madison Valley neighborhood? 

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