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Petrina Yen
Leading Stylist
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Introduction
“What do you want to know? I was born in Malaysia. I love working on hair. It is an art, you create
a piece of art out of it,” says Yen with the energy and enthusiasm of a
teenager as she sits down for this interview. She is filled with a zest
for life and her bubbly personality – that ready smile, infectious
laughter and wonderful sense of humor – add a refreshing dimension to
the salon experience.
Her Salon Experience
Yen followed in her mother’s footsteps
as a hairstylist. As a child, she would follow mom to the hair salon where
she worked and soon, the life and work became something special to her,
something she aspired to pursue when she grew up.
Yen began her career in
1992 and worked her way from being a shampoo girl to a color technician
and now a leading stylist with THE salon.
Her understanding of the human soul
“I make it a point to understand my
clients’ needs,” says Yen, who goes to great lengths to pamper her
clients.
“I love making people pretty,” she
declares. “I feel happy when I make someone happy, and very often people
are happy when they look pretty,” she reasons.
But she is not a bundle of energy all the
time, she says.
“Sometimes, clients may not appreciate
conversation, or may not like me being so full of energy, so I have to
adjust,” she explains. In fact, she can be very much a “mother” to
her clients, a trait she may have acquired during her childhood, watching
mom being mom. She fondly refers to a good number of clients as “my
sons”.
“I am a mother, what,” she says. Indeed.
But really, only to her clients, though one could easily see she’ll make
a great mother with her understanding of others’ needs.
Celebrity Connections
Yen was involved in the National Day
Event where she took care of the hosts for the evening, Sharon Au
and the Flying Dutchman. It was very demanding as she had to turn
around superb work at lightning speed. She was also involved at the MTV
Asia Awards where she had to attend to “so many famous heads”,
the most lasting impression of which were those belonging to the pop
group, Blue.
Among her regular clients are Leslie Tan and
Lionel Tan, both members of Singapore’s premier classical music
ensemble, the T’ang Quartet. |
