One Barber’s $9 Clip Job Is Another’s $200 ‘Picasso’

A month has passed and so has most of the clamor over President Clinton’s haircut, the $200 job performed by stylist Cristophe as Air Force One sat on the Tarmac at Los Angeles International.

Now it’s time for coolheaded analysis of the real question: What gentlemen’s haircut is worth $200? We’re talking meat and potatoes, no curl, no color. Is a designer clip that much better than a trim at the corner barbershop?

In Clinton’s case, only his hairdresser knows. And Cristophe isn’t talking. Other stylists, however, are willing to discuss relative merits and prices.

“Come on,” says Jose Eber, the couture cowboy of Beverly Hills. “How can you compare a top restaurant to McDonald’s?”

Down the street, at Dusty Fleming’s salon, where Jeff Bridges and ABC President Bob Iger pay top dollar, Fleming himself says: “I charge $100 for a haircut and put in $150 worth of effort. Vogue is my bible. If you can’t find your haircut in Vogue , you’re out of fashion, honey.”

But across town at Ivan’s Barber Shop in Glendale, Ivan Holmoe has been working the same chair for 45 years, and figures his regulars get everything a man needs, tonsorially speaking.

“I don’t pamper them,” he says. “I spend 20 minutes. I charge eight bucks.”

Holmoe is a dinosaur from the days of barber poles and Aqua Velva, when the hum of dryers signaled foreign territory for males. No fashion magazines lay scattered around his shop. Instead, customers can browse through yearbooks from nearby Hoover High.

The times, however, have changed as surely as the hairstyles. According to American Salon magazine, two-thirds of this country’s men patronized salons last year.

Stylists like Cristophe and Eber got a mere snip of that business. The going rate for a top name is around $100. (Clinton paid more for the house call.) The price drops to about $65 if you don’t insist on having the boss do the work personally.

But the average man pays less than $11 a visit, American Salon estimates, which means he isn’t going anywhere near Beverly Hills.

That leaves salons like Fantastic Sam’s, the Sassoon of strip malls. Or Supercuts, where 70% of the customers are male.

“I could go to the place my wife goes and pay $45 to be just as unhappy about my hair as I am paying $9,” says George Shilala Jr., a boat builder who swears by Supercuts. “It’s so arbitrary. You could let your mother do it if you like the way it looks.”

Is your mother good at math? Geometry, a Supercuts official says, is the secret to hair.

“You are cutting straight lines over a rounded surface to create angles,” says RoseAnn Perea, the chain’s training director.

If that sounds complex, Perea insists it isn’t. Her stylists take one week of what she calls “extensive” training to learn five basic principles, such as how to cut bangs and how to taper a cut. They are taught to avoid common mistakes, like “cutting a cowlick too short so that it stands up.”

Avoid the pratfalls and follow procedure, Perea says, and you can cut anyone’s hair in 20 minutes. For $9. Perfectly.

“There is that old perception: if it costs more, it’s better,” she notes. “It’s just a perception. That is where your money goes.”

Such talk ruffles the feathers on Eber’s hat. It makes Fleming downright snippy.

“Completely untrue,” he says. “Supercuts just whacks it off. I cut totally by feel, from the center of my gut. The hair talks to my hands.”

Stylists love to wax about the feel of the work, the art of it. But let’s talk bottom line. What, exactly, do you get for the added bucks?

“When I give a class on haircutting, I tell the students that the biggest difference is time,” says Frankie Castaneda, a teacher at the Culver City Beauty College.

“You can go to an expensive salon and take an hour and a half creating beautiful art,” Castaneda says. “Or you go to Supercuts and you’re out of there in 15 minutes and you don’t know what hit you.”

Wait, there’s more. When you visit a tony salon, you get an assistant at the front desk who will place your business calls and receive faxes. You get another assistant who brings food and drink. You get the opportunity to tip these people.

And you get someone like Eber, who insists he can make a man look thinner, taller and more confident. “You have no idea of the power of hair,” he says. The secret is in the eye.

“It’s like a painter,” Eber notes. “What makes a Picasso? They can’t teach that. I was lucky to be born with it.”

For customer Jacques Sandjian, such artistry translates into peace of mind.

“You know how it is,” the Woodland Hills jeweler says. “You go to someone and they cut your hair short and you don’t like it, but there isn’t enough hair left to do anything about it.

“There are no risks at a place like this (Eber’s),” Sandjian continues. “You know your hair is going to look great. You will have less problems when you comb it. It will stay in place all the time.”

But are appearances so important? Is spending $100 for a haircut perhaps frivolous when people are going without food and shelter or trying to stick to a budget?

“I’m not putting down Supercuts and I’m not telling everyone to get a $200 haircut,” Eber says. “But when your hair is important and it’s going to make you feel great about yourself, you should spend the money.”

The Beverly Hills stylist is thinking of turning Sundays into men’s day at his salon. Video monitors would show football games. A pool table would be rolled in.

This, apparently, is another benefit of spending $100. You get atmosphere.

“We’ve got that too,” Glendale barber Holmoe retorts. “We’ve got wallpaper that has been on the walls for 40 years.”