Cut Rates : Fashion: Even in a town of trendy $100 haircuts, it’s still possible to get a high-style haircut for a fraction of that price.
A haircut at many of Southern California’s cutting-edge salons can set you back $50, or $100 or even $200. But it doesn’t have to. At one Burbank shop, $25 will buy one of the trendiest clips around. And even in Beverly Hills, there is such a thing as a $30 haircut.
Some of the best--and busiest--cutters haven’t opened eponymous salons yet, nor do they have publicity agents planting their names in all the right places. They’re the up-and-comers, unknown talents hidden in well-known salons who are quietly building reputations as an affordable new generation of hairdressers. (But be forewarned: At some salons, you still need to book several days in advance.)
At Yuki salon at Sunset Plaza, owner Yuki Takei counts Anjelica Huston, Michelle Phillips and Barbara Walters among his clients. A few chairs away, Koji Toyoda quietly cuts his own coterie of younger stars--rock ‘n rollers Chynna Phillips and Wendy Wilson. Toyoda, who wields his scissors fast and furiously and often finishes with a client in five minutes, always charges $40 for a haircut. (So does Takei, which is unusual for a salon owner with a star-studded client list. “I don’t have an attitude, and I don’t want to take advantage of my clients and charge $200,” he says.)
“I cut for a woman’s face,” says Toyoda, 30, who came to Los Angeles seven years ago from Japan where he was a free-lance stylist working for magazines, video and television. He insists that his cuts are never trendy, but at least two hairstyle magazines called Chynna Phillip’s bob the celebrity do of 1991. “If the style turns out to be a trend, I’m lucky. Basically I do very natural, classic looks.”
For every classic cut Toyoda snips, stylist Sabrina Vazquez does an equal number of wild and wacky styles. In fact, at Mitchell Field’s Antenna Modern Hair in Burbank, her own head full of platinum and black braids looks pretty tame. One of her clients, Bret Helm, a 32-year-old songwriter and producer, has dozens of Technicolor braids attached to his own mane of dark hair. Mingled with the vibrant extensions are “sticks,” hanks of hair wrapped in bright multicolored threads.
While salon owner Mitchell Field charges $40 for a cut, Vazquez typically charges $25 to do a basic cut or attach a few vivid extensions. (A look like Helm’s commands about $200 and takes several hours to complete.)
“I get inspired by rock ‘n’ rollers,” says Vazquez, 23. “I’m doing what I grew up with--punk looks that are modernized.” Customers who can relate to peace symbols made of Aqua-Net cans and a mirror lined with autographed pictures of rock stars will feel right at home in Vazquez’s chair.
At the two JosephMartin salons in Beverly Hills, Joseph Kendall and Martin Fassnidge each charge $100 for a cut. But a cutter who bills herself simply as “Flash” charges $30 at the JosephMartin salon in the Beverly Hilton. A native of New Orleans, Flash came to Los Angeles four years ago, landing first at the John Atchison salon on 3rd Street, which specializes in African-American hair. That’s where she started building a steady clientele that today includes actress Lynn Whitfield and several other black performers.
One of the hottest trends in hair styling today involves a return to rollers, and Flash has jumped on the bandwagon. “I was lucky enough to learn how to set rollers when nobody else was really doing them,” explains the 34-year-old hair cutter, who wears her own bleached hair in an asymmetrical beehive. “Now everyone wants rollers.”
“I’m one of the hairdressers who likes ugly hair,” she continues. “I see a woman come in with burned-out, frizzed-out hair. That makes me feel good. I know I can make her hair beautiful.”
Cameron Peri has been working at his father’s John Peri salon in Marina del Rey for 10 years. A surfer who grew up in Playa del Rey, 32-year-old Peri sports a short ‘50s-inspired cut and caters to clients in their teens and 20s and, as he describes them, “some older people who walk on the wild side.” Peri’s price has held fast at $30 a cut for more than three years. His father charges $40. “We’re in a recession,” Cameron says. “I want people to be able to afford a cut and not resent me for it.”
A member of the Joico hair-care products design team, which travels the country teaching the latest in hair-styling techniques, Peri frequently designs innovative styles that are taught to other hairdressers. But he admits that the styles he generates for Joico are too high-style for most of his salon clients. “Right now we’re doing tons of clipper work. My clients like short hair,” he says. But almost as fast as those words come out of his mouth he adds, “Hey, wait a minute. This is still L.A. There are plenty of women who come in and still want long, sexy blond hair.”
