Cruz settled on symbolic rainbow color, and her friend connected her with a model named Passion Wilson-Suarez, who is a survivor of the terrorist attack at Pulse. Wilson-Suarez met Cruz at her home studio for the appointment, and gave the hairstylist total creative license to go wild with color.

What followed was an eight-hour session during which Wilson-Suarez shared her terrifying experience in the club that night while Cruz painted brightly colored panels around her face and melted red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet throughout her hair. “You could feel a chill in the room, particularly because we were in my house and in such close quarters. The vibe was so surreal,” Cruz says.

While they talked, Cruz noticed the peaks and valleys of a pulse vector tattooed on Wilson-Suarez’s forearm. Despite having zero experience with shaved-hair designs, Cruz was inspired to incorporate the same design at the nape of her client’s neck. To emphasize the pattern, she added corresponding shades of ultra-fine glitter to the vector of hair using a mix of two parts sparkle and one part hair wax on an eyebrow brush.