Hair Fashions Break Into Curls as a New Wave of Styles Rolls In

Pippa Winder, who came from San Francisco to stay with a friend in Agoura, brought in the New Year at Peanuts, a club on Santa Monica Boulevard.

But first, the 16-year-old stopped in at Cassandre 2000, one of the San Fernando Valley’s trendy hair salons, to have something daring done to her hair 1987.

So what did the Nastassja Kinskis of the Valley hair scene do with Winder’s straight little bob?

They gave it old-fashioned lacy curls that fell down and away, a sort of 1930s look.

Her hairdresser, Terah Weeks, christened it the “sexy, carefree, wispy look.”

‘Up’ Style Takes a Fall

A little eavesdropping at some of the Valley’s houses of haute hair style Wednesday revealed that, for those putting down $100 to be just right for the big party at Pip’s Rodeo Drive or Helena’s, the word was that the “up do” just wouldn’t do.

“Up do,” of course, is how hair dressers refer to that recently-popular look characterized by stiff projections of hair, shocking fluorescent tints and designs shaved into the side above one ear.

But today, hair dressers pronounce the words with a bit of a sneer.

“This year, young people don’t want to be spiky or punky,” Weeks said. “They still want to rebel. But they want to rebel by being soft, feminine and sexy.”

“It’s not a party-do year,” said Jimmy Encao, owner of Papillon’s Hair Design on Ventura Boulevard in Studio City. “We haven’t done any crazy colors, no purples, no pinks.”

That is not to say that purples, pinks and patterns have entirely disappeared.

Over at Antenna in Reseda, the Valley’s premier punk salon, Marcia De Angelius of Tujunga got ready for the San Clemente party circuit with a frosted crown shag and geometric squares shaved into the side to complement her platinum pony tail.

The 21-year-old visual arts major at California Institute of the Arts considered that the “new ‘80s look.”

An ashen-faced Robert Boyington, a 16-year-old student at Reseda High School, had his shoulder-length slick black hair teased into a pompadour with yellow and orange roots.

He was off to celebrate the quick recovery of rock singer Jace White, from the local group Serious Pleasure, who was injured in an auto accident. He was pleased with the strident look.

Conservative Trend

But back at Papillon and Cassandre 2000, two of the Valley’s trend-setting salons, most hairdressers were whipping up much more conservative coifs--relatively speaking--this New Year’s Eve.

For example, Northridge carpenter and sometime rock drummer Dean Atkinson, prepping for a night of party and club hopping in Palm Springs, requested of Papillon hairdresser Lionel Peralta: “Give me something wild. Surprise me.”

Peralta surprised him by blow-drying and lacquering his honey-blond, shoulder-length hair into a kind of rangy Rod Stewart look, wild in only a subdued sort of way.

At Cassandre, Jennifer Preisler of Agoura Hills, an 18-year-old student home for the holidays from UC Santa Barbara, did something she had never done before to surprise the friends she was going to see at the clubs in Hollywood:

Preisler became a blonde--a blonde on the top of the head anyway, allowing the short hair on the sides to remain its usual light brown.

“I’ve always wanted to dye it before, but I’ve never had the guts,” Preisler said. “I figured, since it was New Year’s, I’d go all the way.”

And 7-year-old Kimberly Foster of Northridge, after getting her silky blonde hair brushed and pulled back at Papillon, selected a bright red hair band with a perforated cellophane bow to complete her fashion statement.

And what a party she was planning for New Year’s Eve!

Kimberly said she was going to her grandmother’s house with her family and would get to stay up an hour past bedtime.

“Not midnight,” she said brightly. “I usually go to bed at 8.”

Contributing to this story were Times Staff Writers Claudia Puig and Deborrah Wilkinson.