Chapter 1 - There’s Lovely New You Ahead

"When I look into a woman's hair I look into her very soul," pronounced the great Antoine, the first and, at seventy-six, the most enduring of the twentieth century's special breed of internationally famous hair stylists.

"She does not even have to speak. I can tell at a glance if she is in love or beloved," he continued, as, deftly flicking a comb through a model's hair, he brought her features into new focus. Hundreds of plush Maison Antoine salons around the world now proudly bear the name of this artist and showman who put over the short bob in 1904 and whose bubbling imagination has created, among countless other coiffure milestones, Greta Garbo's pageboy, Claudette Colbert's bangs and Mary Martin's "South Pacific" wash-and-wear hairdo.

"I can also tell if she's lazy or energetic, a bore or a fascinating woman, polite or inconsiderate," Antoine continued. "It's every woman's duty to look her best out of consideration for others."

What happy or appalling tales does your hair tell about you?

Whether you're young and pretty, warm and vivacious, cool and sophisticated, gay and witty, mature and intelligent or gentle and wise, does the world see you as you really are?

Or does your hair style:

• Tell tales of a woman with mind and body in imperfect harmony, well-groomed when you feel like making the effort, but awry the greater part of the time? No woman can be more attractive than her coiffure, especially when it's custom-designed to bring out her individuality.
• Underline a defeatist attitude? Hair that is oily, fine, curly or a combination of all three got you down long ago and you decided to surrender unconditionally.
• Bespeak a lack of originality? You don't care how you look as long as it's like someone else. Don't be a type. Be an individual. Study  the  stars,  but  don't  imitate them. Your beauty, like theirs, lies in being different.
• Cry out bad taste? Too many tight, fussy curls, too much hair color, an unflattering shade in the first place, too many hairpieces worked into an archaic Mandarin or Southern-belle style or too many hair ornaments which should be reserved for formal events.
• Mirror your inability or unconscious refusal to keep up with the times? Perhaps you refuse to change a line of the hairdo you were wearing when you first met "him".
• Let the whole world know you are lazy?  "Some women are even too lazy to brush their hair," Antoine says. "But no one is really happy until he or she acquires self-control—and that demands work."

Vanity is a sign of mental health, many psychiatrists agree. A mental patient's renewed interest in her appearance is often considered by her physician to be a good sign she is on the road to recovery.

Love and a hairdo, it has been said, make a woman beautiful. Why not find out if it's true?

No one can promise romance. But today a flattering hairdo is within the reach of every woman. And who knows, the assurance of knowing you look your best may just give you the wonderful inward feeling of confidence that could lead to something new and exciting.

The curve of a lip can be flattened or plumped. A nose or antenna ears can be altered by plastic surgery. Eyes can be enlarged by make-up. It takes weeks, even months of hard work and restraint to develop a fashionable figure. With no other feature can a woman do as much as she can with her hair. And she can do it—or have it done—in a matter of hours.

She can treat it as she would rough silk and color it any shade she chooses. But unlike rough silk she can color it again and again. She can cut it into any shape, and even change its texture with gentling or body-building lotions.

A really good styling works little less than pure magic. It can not only camouflage a woman's worst features and enhance her best, it can improve her over-all silhouette, making her look all of one piece, bringing out the color of her eyes, changing the apparent shading of her skin. But most of all it can make her spirits soar.

Beautiful hair can be yours if you have:

• The will to improve.
• The patience to follow through.
• Time to invest wisely.
• Money to invest wisely.

But most important are the will and the patience.

Leave the rest to the wonderful world of modern beauty science with its gentle permanents, instant sprays, soft colors, manageable-making rinses, and the skill of today's hair stylists.

Once you establish a definite rhythm in your daily brushing the strokes will seem to go faster and faster. Nightly setting, if you are one of the unfortunates who must, will become an invaluable habit rather than a chore once practice decreases your thumbs from ten to two. You should be able to do the job in ten to fifteen minutes. Good permanents, good stylings and good color jobs cost a little more and sometimes much more, just as good shoes do. But once you've learned the economy of all three you'll never accept inadequate substitutes.

Voyages to the pleasure palaces of beauty captained by well-known stylists naturally will cost considerably more— $25, $50, and up and up and up. For most women, these trips are once-in-a-lifetime, if ever, experiences. But fortunately, with the top salons' new blueprint method of hair-style distribution, the coiffure created in a back room of a fashionable Fifth Avenue salon one day, often makes its debut in the smallest towns the next.

Your resources are particularly slim? Here's one more word of wisdom from Antoine, who, incidentally, when he was sixteen, styled the hair of Sarah Bernhardt.

"If your budget is too small for a good permanent or a good color job, get an expert styling and wear your hair straight. Clean, shining, well-groomed hair is a thousand times more attractive than poor color and frizz."

Before you launch your beauty program, be realistic. It is possible to achieve your most becoming hairdo, but don't expect the perfection of a magazine cover-girl twenty-four hours a. day. A stylist will hover with brush and comb over each new creation until the split second before the shutter of the fashion camera opens on his model. A bit of himself goes into every hair photograph. If his model is in great demand she often goes right on to another stylist who will shampoo out the old style and set in a new one. Some top models will have as many as three hair-style assignments a day.

Keep a cool head, too. You'd have to be a hair expert and a chemist not to be completely confused by the conflicting advertising claims of lotions, potions, cream rinses, egg shampoos, oil permanents, and just about everything else that goes on top of the female head today. And the more you read and the more you listen, the more confused you are likely to become.

Scissors men and razor men are constantly at swords' points over the relative merits of their styling tools. Yet as Leon Amendola, head of the Charles of the Ritz School of Advanced Hair Design, points out, "You can only do two things with hair ends—cut them straight across or at an angle. Both tools are basically the same."

Wash your hair every day with X shampoo and get it squeaking clean, one school advocates. Don't wash your hair too often, use any soap you have around, and don't get it too clean, insists another school.

Some stylists promise they'll make your straight hair curl with a cut. Others promise the same result with a heat lamp.

Some say all the confusion which reigns around your problem head is merely a smoke screen to hide the fact that there really isn't anything to know about hair. The more confused you are the more you keep returning to the "experts". But be consoled. Harriet Peters, Helena Rubinstein's hair technologist for the past thirty years, admits she learns something new about hair every day.

Here are a few facts most beauty experts agree upon:

Today's  beauty  products   made  by  fine  firms  are basically good even if their claims are a little excessive. No reputable firm will run the risk of merchandising an inferior product. "It's misuse which risks havoc," Harriet
Peters says.  "Do you blame your butcher when you overcook a fine steak?"

Use the sense under your hair. Discount fantastic claims. No one, for example, can cut curl into your hair if it is not there to begin with. Read labels and instructions carefully. Buy small quantities of new products. Ex
periment until you find the products which will do the best job for you.

When you find the stylist who understands your head best, "grapple him to yourself with hooks of steel." And always bear in mind that a good hairdo will lift your spirits. If you are occasionally disappointed, remember a hairdo is not a lifetime acquisition but a brief adventure, and that there's always another new one ahead.

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