I was a student at Ogle Fort Worth from November 2020 to July 2021. Esoterica visited my school in April of 2021. They did two presentations, one for day school and one for night school. I was chosen as a model for night school’s presentation, with Ale cutting my hair. He was rude to me throughout all of our interactions, which made me really uncomfortable. My intuition was warning me about him and his salon.
I attended day school, so I got to see their first presentation. It included a spoken presentation and haircut demos. They asked for models and although I volunteered, others were chosen before me. I was a little bummed because I needed a haircut, but moved on and settled in to hear what they had to say. Three people from Esoterica were there presenting: Ale, Nekesa and one more girl who’s name I can’t remember. Our director, Mrs. Chaney, was very fond of them and made that clear. She basically said working at Esoterica was a privilege. She also highlighted that the “bootcamp” program was not only very difficult to get into, it was also extremely challenging; only certain stylists could make it though.
Esoterica described themselves as “diverse and open to everyone”, painting a picture that they were unique and different from other salons. As they handed out their service menus, everyone seemed very excited. I didn’t share in that excitement. To me, they sounded very pretentious, and I felt they only hired people who fit a specific “type”. They went forward with doing their haircuts after this. I had clients to work on at the time, so I didn’t get to see all of their morning presentations. They were doing an evening show though, and since I was staying late to makeup hours I volunteered as a model again. I really didn’t know anything about Ale at this point but I didn’t question his skills. The consultation was very short and felt rushed. He barely said anything to me, and when I asked him questions he made me feel like a problem to him; like he couldn’t be bothered to actually talk to me. Since he was doing my hair, I was in his space for a bit of the evening. I noticed that Ale treated the conventionally attractive girls much better than the rest. I was a little heavier set, and I noticed he tended to be short to girls sharing my body type when he did answer our questions or interacted with us. Not too long after this I heard about a fellow student who started at Esoterica. She would talk about how Ale would message her, comment on her stories telling her how beautiful she was, ect. I didn’t question it, but it felt very weird. Not only was he in a position of power over her, but the age gap was rather large as well. I am not sure if he behaved this way with other students at this time, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.
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