When they want crazy hair color, they turn to her. Wild hues, smiley faces, stripes, flames, animal print, Rej Hidalgo can do it all.
Hidalgo, the “indye” behind Magpatina, specializes in bleach jobs, custom hair color and hair painting.
“Nagbunga lang siya mula sa kaartehan ko,” Hidalgo told Lifestyle, sharing that she’s always been fascinated by hair.
She spent her teenage years experimenting with her own hair color and haircuts. At one point, she even went for permed, kinky curls. “I had colored hair from 2011 to 2020. I’ve fried my hair more than enough for me to know what’s not good to do on other people’s hair.”
Hidalgo was always intrigued by other people’s hair. “I find myself drawn to people who are very expressive with their hair.”
When she was younger, not a lot of people colored their hair—“mga punks lang, mostly, or cosplayers.” Hidalgo was so excited to graduate from her strict Catholic high school so she could color her hair, too. “Since I had good grades back then, I asked my parents to help me bleach my hair and they had no choice, haha! That memory is so special to me now.”
That became the gateway for her. “After that, I never stopped getting my hands on dyes and inhaling hydrogen peroxide.”
She kept coloring and cutting her own hair and friends took notice, asking her to do theirs, too. Soon, she was coloring even the friends of her friends. “I wasn’t even charging back then.”
It was just something she really enjoyed. “I also liked going to really cheap salons because that was all I could afford at the time, just so I could observe how they do things. Then I’d watch videos online on how the high-end salons do it also.”
Hidalgo had a natural flair for it, given her aptitude for art. She’s a fine arts graduate who majored in painting and she worked in the art department of film and TV productions. “That’s where I learned color theory and the service type of job that I now apply in Magpatina.”
Paying customer
Her first paying customer was the friend of an ex, someone whose hair she had already colored for free. She asked Hidalgo to dye her very long hair a bright blue. Hidalgo described the process as “sobrang punks”: “She went to my place, we were just on the floor because I had no chair in the apartment back then, and I would just rinse her hair in the bathroom. I would continue to do that for six years before I had a decent shampoo bowl.”
Like it did for many other people, the global health crisis gave Hidalgo pause. “It wasn’t until the pandemic happened when I had a better sense of introspection and truly realized this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.”
Magpatina is almost 8 years old now and it’s the second year Hidalgo has been focused on it full-time. Her color studio is in Las Piñas, but clients get to book Hidalgo for home service as well.
Magpatina is already fully booked for February but there are still slots for March. The process of booking Magpatina starts with a free online consultation, usually done through private messaging on Instagram. It can take her a while to give a quote, Hidalgo admits, because she first goes through all the steps required by the particular job the client wants. But once she and the client agree on the quote, they make the appointment.
Hidalgo prepares for each session carefully—including the socialization aspect of it. It’s important to her that her clients are comfortable, especially since she’s heard stories from people who have experienced trauma from salon visits.
“I’m very sentimental so I try to make every session memorable. It’s important for me to connect to them because they’re allowing me to be a part of a body transformation. That’s a big deal for me.”
She enjoys the time she spends with her clients. “That’s what makes my work exciting—connecting with different minds. We spend hours, sometimes the entire day in my studio so we have a lot of time to share stories.”
Some clients even become her close friends. “They’re usually people who are very dedicated to their own craft. That energy leaves an imprint on my studio and it really inspires me to be good at my own thing too.”
Some dye jobs take her 12 to 15 hours to finish. But they’re all worth it.
She loves seeing the impact of her work on her clients and she loves hearing that their new hair is a dream come true. A client in her 40s told Hidalgo she’d been dreaming of having purple hair since she was 20. “It means a lot to me to provide people with this kind of experience.”
She also loves it when they’re really feeling their new look: “‘Yung kapag na-GGSS (gandang-ganda/gwapong-gwapo sa sarili) sila.”
Her message for people who want a drastic hair change: “Coloring hair is reversible. You can have it dyed dark again, worst case scenario. Also, hair grows back. So if you want it, do it now.”
Paint
Hair is her canvas and her choice of paint? “Most of the time, I use semi-permanent hair dyes. I like it because it’s kinda like paint, I don’t have to compute the formula. Minamata ko lang ‘yung color mixing since I was trained in art school to do it that way. It also doesn’t contain ammonia and basically just coats the hair with color. Malambot din siya sa buhok. (It’s soft on the hair).”
When it comes to client requests, for Hidalgo, “The wilder the better. It challenges me technically and creatively—I feel like I’ve ranked up after I’ve completed it.”
But she also relishes being able to do the same designs over and over again. “I’m inspired by craftmasters who do the same thing for decades and become these indestructible artists.”
Sometimes, clients ask for more subtle, natural-looking colors and Hidalgo refers them to her contemporaries who specialize in those kinds of dye jobs. “That’s my dream—for there to be more of us in the color community with our own specialties so we can all thrive together.”
Hidalgo makes sure she’s updated when it comes to trends. “I think it’s important to keep track of what’s new. It’s also good to see potential trends so I can do it way ahead. By the time the surge of same requests come, gamay ko na paano gawin (I already know how to do it)!”
She also stays abreast with developments in hair color. “I focus on new techniques being developed, new formulas being used, potential new canons for us hairdressers. Just in the past 10 years, there has been so much improvement in products.”
There are so many things she wants to do. She’d love to do hair for fashion runways or for catalogs. She wants to work on merch that involves dyeing. She plans to incorporate other forms of art and collaborate with different kinds of artists through Magpatina. “That’s my main goal. You can just imagine the endless possibilities. I don’t think I’ll ever reach a point na I’ve done it all … I’m open to collaborating with different kinds of creatives, trying my best to incorporate hair art in every way.”
She also wants to teach so there would be more colorists like her. She’s open for apprenticeship, she says, and would like aspiring hair colorists to reach out to her. “I’d love to be able to accommodate more clients with a team of like-minded hair specialists.”
Magpatina is doing well and Hidalgo has the urge “to make this bigger than me.” “Gusto ko i-angat ‘yung value ng ‘parlorista’ sa society, kasi hindi naman biro ‘yung labor na kasama dito. (I want to uplift hairdressers—the work that we do is no joke.)”
Find @magpatinahair on Instagram.
