The local hair dresser’s careful, shame-free treatment of matted hair has made her a viral sensation on Tiktok, Instagram and beyond.
by Rachel Simon | photography by Taylor McDonald

In the five years since opening Tone Hair Salon in North Raleigh, owner and lead stylist Leda Fazal had mastered numerous skills: handling curls, touching up roots, even installing hair extensions using an original method so effective it earned her a patent. But on the day in 2021 that a woman with a “helmet” of matted hair walked into the salon and requested help, Fazal found herself at a rare loss for what to do.

“It was a huge mat — I’d never seen it before,” says Fazal. “I didn’t even know that existed.”

Matting is when hair gets so tangled that it fuses together into a tight, thick mass. At the time, the condition wasn’t on most people’s radars, despite being an all-too-common occurrence. Part of the reason was stigma: the lack of brushing that causes the hair condition is often a result of disability or depression, as was the case for this woman. Fazal remembers her client crying as she explained she’d gone to seven other salons to try to fix her hair, but was told by all of them that they’d
have to totally shave her head. 

Fazal and her team didn’t agree with those other assessments. “My assistant at the time was like, Leda, I think we can get this out,” she recalls. Over the course of nearly five hours, with great patience, the duo untangled the mat — without having to sacrifice any of the client’s strands.

“When I tell you she had the most beautiful hair — we were like, thank God we didn’t shave it,” Fazal says. Afterwards, the client “was in tears, she was so happy.”

That kind of moving experience now happens frequently at Tone, a salon that’s become known for its skill in dematting, in large part to Fazal’s major social media presence. Over the past several years, she has posted thousands of videos showcasing her “judgment-free” dematting (including live feeds) on TikTok and YouTube, collectively earning more than 3 million followers. Part of the videos’ popularity is their uniqueness: many viewers have never seen matted hair before, let alone the process of detangling it. But much of the reason is actually the opposite — familiarity. “People comment, this happened to me and I had to shave it, this happened to me and I was depressed, this happened to me and I was bedridden,’” Fazal says. 

Matting can happen in a matter of days or weeks. It’s often a consequence of mental illness, physical injury or (as Fazal often finds) time spent in a hospital bed. Unfortunately, the dematting process can be very slow, taking upwards of nine or 10 hours (not counting the frequent day-long wait beforehand, after oil is applied to soften the hair enough to be worked on). Depending on the case, as many as four stylists might be working on a client at once, all using specialized dematting combs with extra-sharp, serrated blades designed to get through even the toughest knots without harming skin. “It’s not a day at the spa; there is some tugging and pulling,” admits Fazal. But the relief it can bring often overshadows any pain. “Every time someone leaves,” she says, “it’s tears, from both the stylist and the client.”

Few other salons nationwide specialize in dematting like Tone does; many opt to cut large chunks of hair off rather than put the work in to detangle. “I see those and go, what are you doing?! It could’ve been saved!” Fazal says with dismay. “It just takes patience.”

Despite her aptitude for it, the salon owner never intended to end up in the dematting business, or even in hair styling at all. After moving to Raleigh from New York as a teen, she attended William Peace University (then the women-only Peace College) to study communications and computer science. Unsure of her career path, she took a bartending gig post-graduation before following in a friend’s footsteps at hair school. 

“I’ve always loved art, and hair is art on a person,” Fazal recalls thinking. “I was like, this sounds good, I’m gonna try it out, and if it doesn’t work out, I have my degrees.”

After a few years assisting at a local salon, she decided to open her own shop. “I feel like I was meant to be an entrepreneur,” she says. For over a decade, she freelanced in a small North Raleigh office space, gaining enough client loyalty to make rent. In 2016, when the air conditioning went out and her landlord refused to pay, Fazal decided to take matters into her own hands by buying the bottom floor of the building just two doors down. Seven years later, she bought the top floor, too, turning Tone into the large two-level salon and office space it is today. 

Fazal admits that the purchase was risky for a solo businesswoman, but she had far more confidence than doubt. “I went in being like, you know, even if it’s just me, I’ll be OK,” she recalls. “But I was able to grow my team, and now we’re just killing it, honestly.”

That’s an understatement. On a recent Monday afternoon, the salon was packed to the brim with customers, despite its remote location on Salem Woods Drive. Many clients, Fazal says, fly to Tone from other states, having heard about the salon’s reputation from social media. Fazal started posting on TikTok in the app’s early days back in 2018, and she made her first viral video — a short, silly clip featuring her and an assistant listing common things clients said in the salon — a year later.

“I had 17 followers at the time and most of them were my son’s friends,” Fazal says. “Overnight, literally, I had 10,000 followers.” 

Wanting to capitalize on that success, she began posting at least five times a day, sharing videos featuring Fazal herself performing Tone’s specialty of color corrections or her patented Swan Method of installing hair extensions. When the salon briefly closed in spring 2020 due to the pandemic, Fazal pivoted to at-home clips of hair-bleaching techniques; by the time Tone reopened its doors that summer, she’d gained over 400,000 followers.

Between managing the business’ social media and working as a stylist, Fazal was already happily overscheduled when the salon’s dematting services took off a year later. But after she posted that first video of a client in need, “the floodgates opened,” she recalls. Now, “we get calls every day.”

When a potential client requests a dematting, Fazal and her team “move mountains to make it happen” due to how quickly mats can grow. “If somebody books now, we’re not gonna tell them that we have an opening in two months. We’re gonna move clients and make it work, because it’s crucial. It’s a time thing.” That sense of urgency, plus the hours needed for even several stylists to untangle one bad case, can be exhausting. “It’s very draining, both mentally and physically, on the stylists,” Fazal says. 

And then you add in the videos. Before every appointment, Fazal asks the client if they want to be featured on social media; the owner says around half decline. The ones that do agree to be on camera, she says, do so largely because they “want to spread awareness” on how easy it is for mats to form, as well as how liberating it can be once they’re freed.

Due to the time spent together and the emotional impact of dematting, many of Tone’s dematting clients stay in touch with the stylists long after their appointments; some have even formed bonds with each other. “We actually have a few girls around the same age who went through almost the same thing and they’ve formed a connection,” Fazal says.

Over the next few years, the stylist hopes to expand her team and move Tone to a larger property to address the salon’s growth. More clients will mean more work, of course, but Fazal is undeterred — especially when she’s reminded of why she began dematting in the first place. Her face brightens as she tells me about the day when a woman came to the salon with hair that had been matted for two full years. Fazal and her team spent over eight hours carefully working through the knots, and halfway through the session, she asked the client how she was doing.

“I said, I know it’s been four hours, I know this is painful, and she looked at me and said, Leda, I don’t have my permanent headache any more. I’ve had it for two years, and now it’s gone,” Fazal remembers. “A headache for two years?!”

Fazal shakes her own head in disbelief, before beaming. “Although she was going through the pain of dematting, her headache had stopped,” she says. “And when she left, she was
so happy.”

This article originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of WALTER Magazine