N.Y. haircut: $800. Watching them
try to maintain it: Priceless
By Beth Teitell
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Here's another reason
not to move to New York: An $800 haircut just hit the meatpacking district.
Not that you'd have to blow a month's rent
on your head if you moved to Manhattan, but you'd be surrounded by others who
had, and by comparison, you'd look like Linda Tripp - on a bad day.
In Boston, where a $250 cut is still the stuff of
dreams (for hairdressers, not dressees), we're safe, but even so, I could already
feel the angst of maintaining an ephemeral work of wearable art (or marketing
triumph). The stress of does-it-still-look-perfect would whip me into a deep sweat,
but who could shower? When you're wearing $800 in layers, basic hygiene comes
second to keeping your blowout.
And that's not the worst part. Considering the fact
that the $800 man, Orlando Pita, is a stylist to the stars (Jennifer Connelly,
Naomi Campbell, Kirsten Dunst), it's probably impossible to get an appointment.
``Would you want an $800 cut?'' a friend asked after
reading about Orlo, the new salon. ``Even if someone else was paying?''
Would I?
It sounds good, but it might be like getting a really,
really expensive couch, and you bring it home and it makes the rug look shabby,
and so you get a new rug, and of course now the coffee table is just a pathetic
lump in comparison.
If you've got an $800 haircut, you can't get by
with L'Oreal Lash Out mascara anymore. It's Lancome's Definicils or nothing, and
by the way, brow-wax pronto, and boy, that expensive coif really shows up those
laugh lines, better book the Botox.
``It's a vicious, vain little circle,'' my friend
noted.
But there's more to it than add-on expenses. And
I'm not even talking about the looming threat of rain.
What if I got the cut, but even then didn't like
how my hair looked? I'm not ready to accept that I'm never going to have the hair
I want - and especially not when I'm forking over $800. In fact, if there's one
thing I would pay that much for, it would be to continue reveling in denial:
The only thing standing between me and me looking like a movie star is the right
stylist.
Maybe I've got the wrong take: When I called Marc
Harris of Salon Marc Harris on Newbury Street, he said that at a certain point,
pricing is not so much about the quality of the cut but about trust - the ``security
of the relationship.''
(In New York, apparently, $800 is the price of making
sure you're not stood up, or butchered.)
And there's another aspect. It's prestigious for
a hairdresser to command a fee worthy of a dentist. ``I could start charging $800
a haircut,'' Harris ($100 a head) said. ``I might not be cutting anyone, but I
could say it.''
And think how cool (stupid?) you'd feel boasting
about your splurge. ``OK,'' I told my friend, ``I'll go for the haircut if someone
else is paying.''
Then I stopped short. ``Do I have to tip the person
who washes my hair?''
