In Conversation with Charles May

In the summer of 2021, Charles May sat down with the journalist Burgundy Woods for Style Lush TV to look back on a career already more than three decades in. The education under elite Chicago mentors, the quiet return to San Antonio, the clients who had become friends — the conversation moved easily between them. What follows is a summary of what he spoke about that afternoon, in our own words, with one line we have not been able to improve on since.

"Hair changes like life." Charles May

On his philosophy

Charles approaches hair as an expression of identity — something meant to be versatile, changeable, and kept healthy at any age. The most rewarding part of the work, he explained, happens after the chair spins around: the emotional lift that clients feel leaving the salon. The craft, for him, is less about what the hair becomes and more about what it does for the person wearing it.

On elegance, and its origins

Charles credits an early Chicago apprenticeship with the sense of elegance that runs through everything he does — a standard he describes as much ethical as aesthetic. Respect for yourself, respect for the person in the chair. It is the discipline he carries forward, and the one he holds his own work against.

On honest counsel

One of the more memorable notes in the interview was his insistence that the best hairstylists do not always say yes. Part of the work, Charles said, is knowing when to push back — when to decline a service that is not right for the hair, or not right for the person. He framed it as looking out for clients rather than simply pleasing them; a stance that costs him the occasional appointment and earns him decades of loyalty.

On place

Charles is unambiguous about where his heart sits: San Antonio, the Latino community here, the clients who have quietly built a life around his chair. After many years away, the return home has been generative — a new clarity, he said, that goes into the work and so into the people he works on.

On what was next

At the time of the interview, Charles spoke about a future in which he would build an entire salon experience drawn from everything he had learned — a place of elegance and warmth, somewhere that would feel like home both for his clients and for the culture he wanted around them. In the years since, that vision has quietly taken shape at Hair Life Salon inside Crown Couture in Alamo Heights. The conversation about elegance, about place, about the person in the chair — it continues there, one appointment at a time.