Is It True Blondes Have More Fun?

Until now, anyone who wanted to temporarily try a radically different hair style had to resort to the wig sections of department stores. There are drawbacks to this method, chief among them the amused snickers of passers-by. And who can blame them? Anyone who tries to publicly transform herself into the lead from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” should realize that observers are bound to be entertained.

The normal alternative to this has been to discuss a major change with a hairdresser and hope for the best. But Kirk LaMar, who has been styling hair in the Valley for 10 years, had a better idea. “I’ve always thought it would be nice to take the picture I have in my mind and the picture a customer has in her mind and actually look at it,” he says. “An aerospace physicist client of mine told me it could be done, for about a million dollars.”

Eventually, though, LaMar’s physicist friend, John Halloran, figured out how to do it for a lot less. The result is the Image Maker, a computer-generated video that for $25 shows exactly how a new cut or color will make you look. Right now, the device is available in the Valley only at the Gorrindo LaMar Salon in Woodland Hills. But LaMar hopes to begin leasing it soon to other salons through his newly formed company, P. C. Graphics.

About half LaMar’s customers use the Image Maker to see how a style they are really planning to try will look. The other half use it to indulge their fantasies. “They might have curly black hair,” he says, “and they want to see how they’d look in a long blond shag.” But they don’t have to live with the results of such a drastic change if they think better of it. “Instead of getting it done and going into shock for a week,” LaMar says, “they get the shock part out of the way first.”