Anne James Hair Co.

Anne James Hair Co. occupies a suite on 18th Street South in Homewood, in the same stretch of small storefronts that anchors much of the city’s retail and salon business. Owner Leighanne Workman, a working cosmetologist herself, opened the salon with the idea of building a small collective of stylists who could each develop a specialty rather than a shop where every chair does the same thing.

That structure shows up in how the team is organized. Cameran Bramblett focuses on blonding work, extensions, and curly hair, a combination that requires three fairly different skill sets under one stylist. Skyler Turner works primarily in dimensional blonde color and extensions as well, while Olivia Bentley brings seven years of experience across blonde, brunette, and extension work. Izzy Hicks rounds out the color-focused side of the team with her own blonde and extension specialty. The salon mixes booth renters and commission stylists under one roof, a common structure in independent salons that lets experienced stylists run their own client books while still operating under a shared brand and space.

Workman also owns a second salon, Elite and Co., in Montevallo, giving her a foothold in two very different Alabama markets: a dense inner-ring suburb of Birmingham and a small college town further south. Running both locations has apparently shaped how she talks about the business, with an emphasis on mentoring newer stylists and building a client experience that feels personal rather than assembly-line, language that shows up across the salon’s own site and social channels.

Booking at Anne James runs through an online scheduling system, and the salon asks for twenty-four hours’ notice on cancellations along with a fifteen-minute grace period for late arrivals, both fairly standard policies for an appointment-based color salon where a missed slot is difficult to fill on short notice. The salon’s specialties lean heavily toward color services: custom coloring, blonding techniques, and hair extensions show up repeatedly across the stylists’ individual bios, suggesting a shop that has built its reputation on technical color work rather than a broader walk-in cut-and-style business.

The salon sits within easy walking distance of the rest of Homewood’s 18th Street shopping district, close enough to the neighborhood’s restaurants and boutiques that a color appointment, which can run several hours for more involved blonding work, fits naturally around lunch or an afternoon of errands nearby. For a suburb with a long list of hair salons packed into a few blocks, Anne James distinguishes itself less through flash and more through the specificity of what each stylist offers, a roster built one specialty at a time under an owner who still works behind the chair herself.

Social media serves as the salon’s primary public face beyond its own website, with an active Instagram and TikTok presence used to showcase individual stylists’ color transformations. That approach, common among newer independent salons, lets prospective clients essentially audition a stylist’s specific style before ever booking a consultation, a useful tool in a neighborhood with as much salon competition as Homewood has along its main commercial streets.

The salon’s product offerings sit alongside its service menu, giving clients the option to buy the same styling and color-care products their stylist used during an appointment rather than guessing at a drugstore substitute. That retail component is fairly standard for salons built around technical color work, since the products used in a blonding or extension service often require specific aftercare to hold up between appointments. For clients newer to Homewood or simply looking for a change from a previous salon, Anne James offers a straightforward way to browse stylist specialties online before ever sitting in a chair, a level of transparency that has become increasingly common among independent salons competing for attention in a crowded market. The combination of a hands-on owner, a roster of specialists, and a location inside walking distance of the rest of Homewood’s 18th Street shops has let the salon build a loyal following in a relatively short period of time.