Chapter 11 - At The Beauty Salon

Some women spend a good part of their lives in beauty salons while others rarely go at all. Still others dispatch private planes equipped with butlers and steaming casseroles to transport their favorite hairdressers back to Newport or Easthampton for a midsummer styling.

After tossing all available statistics into a vast electronic brain, researchers report that American women spend 943 millions hours and about 400 million dollars annually in some 140 thousand beauty shops.

Why?

Either hair stylists are giving them the emotional uplift they need or the quest for the ideal hair stylist, as well as the quest for beauty, is eternal.

Ruel, along with many other top stylists, feels that: "She goes in self-defense. This is a competitive world and every woman knows that no man is blind to the pretty little redhead next door or the cute blonde in the typing pool."

But how can you find the right stylist for you?

Obviously you know where the most famous stylists are. But you suspect that even if you were to wangle an appointment with one of the better-known hair maestros you would be assigned to a tenth assistant. Unfortunately, your suspicion is well-grounded.

Fortunately, however, there are good stylists everywhere. There must be, because there are so many beautifully coiffed women in all parts of the world for whom thousands of fine artists must be creating flattering hair styles.

Since it's up to you to find the hairdresser who will understand your hair, you might stand outside the better beauty salons in town and watch the heads come out. Or, if you see a particularly beautiful hair style on a woman gracefully ask her who did it.

Your problem is not so much how to find a good stylist but how to behave in a salon? You're sure you would feel uncomfortable in one of the many lavish temples of beauty springing up like mushrooms everywhere? If it's all you can do to say "no" to your local hairdresser when he suggests a frivolous treatment, what are you going to do when an elegant Frenchman inquires, "Madame, of course, would like our specialty, a jewel of a shampoo made from only the finest powdered pearls?"

The idea of letting your hair down in a Louis VI petit-point chair is at once delightfully sybaritic and fraught with alarm? Even if you do shampoo and set your hair and mend your undies before going to your local beauty salon, don't let shyness keep you from going where you think the best stylists are. Beauticians are in business for money, too, and yours is as good as the next woman's.

But no matter where you go, to a one-man operation or a lavish salon, bring your head as well as your hair.

When making an appointment, let your stylist know what you plan to have done so he can set aside ample time. If you are planning to go to one of the busier, more popular salons, make your appointment for a Monday or Tuesday; end of the week appointments are usually reserved for regular customers.

If you must cancel an appointment, phone as early as you possibly can, to allow your hairdresser to allot your time to another customer.

Be punctual, not only out of courtesy to your stylist but to other customers. One late arrival will disrupt a hairdresser's entire schedule

Be explicit, too. If you don't want your hair cut shorter say so plainly. Don't wait until six inches have been clipped and then scream. There's a mirror in front of you to allow you to watch what the stylist is doing. But always remember: for most styles, the dead weight of long hair is a handicap.

Don't play guessing games when your stylist asks, as he should, whether you are single or married, work or play, color or don't color, and when you had your last permanent. He is not being unduly curious. He is simply trying to create a style which will express your personality and still fit into your way of life. He must know your hair color and permanent background before he can give you a new color or perm.

Do bring in pictures of styles you admire. But don't expect a carbon copy. You want a style which will do the most for your particular face, figure, and personality.

Michel Kazan employs a bit of happy customer insurance which more stylists should follow. He never cuts off so much as a split end until the customer has seen the finished style. He provides this preview by loosely arranging the hair into its new lines with hairpins.

Don't be afraid to ask questions about your hair. While stylists don't appreciate idle chatter, like all artists they enjoy expounding their theories. Listen and you will learn.

Be polite, but firm, in larger salons, if too many treatments are suggested. You don't have to submit to every one in the house, unless, of course, you need them, want them, and can afford them.

Watch how your stylist places each roller and pin curl . This lesson will be useful when you try to revitalize the set at home.

Be patient under the dryer. Hair must be bone dry before it can be brushed out. In fact, be patient through most hair-beautifying processes.

If you smoke, be sure to get an ash tray before you make yourself comfortable under the dryer. And please don't take all the magazines.

The wise woman is silent during the comb-out. This gives the artist the opportunity to concentrate all his attention on her hair. If he's a good showman you won't want to chatter; the performance will be too absorbing.
Hairdos are so personal, women are often disappointed because they have expected the impossible. Give yours a chance to settle—and this takes a few hours—before you make your final judgment.

"Would you expect an artist to complete your portrait in a single sitting?" asks well-known stylist Marguerite Buck. She believes a woman should never undertake a major change on her first visit to a stylist. "He may want to condition your hair, or try a temporary color first."

"Just as an expensive dress must be fitted two or three times before it does all it should for your figure, so must a fine hair style," explains Adrian of Maison Antoine. "A line may have to be changed here, a wave there. Your style has to adjust to its new directions. And you have to adjust to handling it," Michel Kazan and Ruel agree.

Or, as still another stylist notes, much more bitterly: "A woman expects a complete face-lifting job in one sitting. How can she expect us to make up in two and one half hours for a lifetime of neglect?"

And, now, the ticklish subject of tipping, really the million-dollar question.

In France, a hairdresser's tip is included, just as is the waiter's, in the bill. In Sweden, a recent delegation of Scandinavian hairdressers reports, women wait until they are given a particularly good styling; then they send their hairdressers candy or flowers.

In the United States, however, the tip is an established part of the American way of life.

While most women resent the practice bitterly, they also constantly wonder how much to give. They don't want to give too little; after all, the tip is part of a hairdresser's income. However, they don't want to give too much and seem gauche or foolish.

Today, there are salons where the crass clink of change is never heard, only the crisp crackle of bills. And, then, fortunately, there are salons where the stylist is delighted with a fifty-cent tip and shampoo girls and manicurists actually smile when they are given a quarter.

In the better New York City salons, and the same would apply to Dallas, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Chicago, 15 to 20 per cent of the bill is usually considered the stylist's fair portion, although many women feel uncomfortable tipping anything less than one dollar for a three-and-a-half-dollar shampoo and set. Fifty cents is most often suggested as the correct tip for shampooists and manicurists. But your pocketbook, too, must be considered when determining the appropriate tip.

If the whole business of tipping unnerves you, deposit your offering gracefully into the operator's pocket. He or she will probably appreciate this tactful gesture.

Never tip the owner of a salon, unless it is a very small shop.

There's one side of tipping no one seems to mention, at least, not in public. If you're a secretary and type a messy letter, or if you're a wife and cook a poor supper, often you run the risk of losing your position.

Yet people who accept tips often seem to expect them whether they render service begrudgingly, carelessly or rudely. Consider the manner with which a service is rendered as well as the service itself.

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