Going Head to Head : The student: Jose Eber, long identified with Hollywood’s famous, is taking his style to masses. He has a new book and media exposure.

It’s Saturday afternoon at J.C. Penney in Northridge. A distinctive voice is drawing shoppers to the cosmetics department, where about 300 pair of eyes are firmly fixed on French-born Jose Eber.

The hair-styling whiz with his own Beverly Hills salon is working his way through the crowd, tossing out beauty tips like cake crumbs.

Wearing his signature waist-length braid topped by an ever-present, fur-trimmed cowboy hat, Eber is promoting his recently published “Beyond Hair, the Ultimate Makeover Book” (Simon & Schuster, $19.95).

Buttery blond Norma Staretz, 48, got up at dawn to make the drive from Santa Monica to the Northridge Fashion Center where she was chosen by Eber for her dream makeover. Emerging with a shorter, uplifted cut, she was worshipful: “He could’ve given me a Mohawk and I’d love it.”

Besides promoting his book, Eber has been getting ready to move to a lavish new salon at Two Rodeo Drive and launch a new hair-care line, the Jose Eber Hair Care Collection, in supermarkets and drugstores, late this year. (This is his second product line. He had one in a licensing agreement with Faberge until last year when the cosmetics company was sold to Unilever.)

Eber’s shining hour as a media sensation and “hairstylist to the stars” is now a page in Beverly Hills history. With his book--filled with re-dos of ordinary women, not celebrities--and his department-store appearances, he has come down from his glitzy perch to pitch a segment of the market with which he has not usually been identified: mainstream America.

It’s one way to boost his name recognition outside the Hollywood community, which might help sales of both the book and product line.

To prepare himself for this new phase of his life, Eber performed an image makeover on himself. “For years, everybody only related me to the stars,” he says. “I’m not denying it. I love the famous people. Who doesn’t? But I had to re-educate (women) and let them know my salons are open to anybody.”

He still cuts hair for a select few, including Cher, Elizabeth Taylor, Jacqueline Smith, Victoria Principal, Ali MacGraw and Farrah Fawcett. For everyone else, he charges $50 for a 5- to 15-minute consultation and then an assistant takes over.

His weeks are filled with 75 to 100 consultations between his five salons: Beverly Hills, the Beverly Center, South Coast Plaza, Palm Desert and the newest one in Dallas.

He just wrapped up filming in Morocco and Milan for his hair-care advertising campaign scheduled to air in January.

His five-year stint as a regular guest on Hour Magazine ended last year when the show went off the air. But he still appears on “Donahue” and “Live With Regis and Kathie Lee.” Add to that a cameo appearance in an upcoming feature film, “Boris & Natasha,” movie-star house calls and occasional globe-trotting for clients.

Some of his competitors wonder whether Eber’s leap from the Hollywood fishbowl into the mainstream is going to work out.

“The problem with having a celebrity clientele,” says Beverly Hills hairstylist Allen Edwards, “is that you have to be careful not to become known for who you do instead of what you do.”

Others wonder whether Eber’s style of doing business went out with the ‘80s.

“He would arrive at 1:30 for an 11 o’clock consultation,” says Jeanne Landet, former artistic director at Eber’s Beverly Center salon, now at Cristophe in Beverly Hills.

“Things have changed tremendously,” concedes Eber. “I finally learned that time is very valuable.”