BY DESIGN : Where Color and Hair Rule

The Place: Lulu’s Alibi, an espresso lounge, art forum, Brazilian grill that is “almost always open”; 1640 Sawtelle Blvd., Los Angeles; (310) 479-6007.

Atmosphere: A casual, funky, Westside coffeehouse filled with serious, brow-furrowed college students, long-winded philosophers engaged in heated discussions (“And that will be the rebirth of the small, independent farmer!”), and aging New Age-y types.

Serving Up Style: The baby-faced male counter clerk/waiter is a colorful punk peacock: his dyed, platinum-blond hair tucked under a multicolored, puffy hat; a vivid blue, cropped-sleeve sweater over a white, long underwear shirt; ultra-baggy, patched jeans with a rear horizontal zipper, and a dangling white rosary-beaded cross necklace. The owner is Katharine Hepburn meets Pippi Longstocking: large blue eyes; bright-red lipstick; blue and red baseball cap over platinum-blond hair worn in two teensy braids; a blue and white pin-striped shirt; pleated khaki pants and white Keds.

Customer Themes: Ubiquitous baggy khaki pants. Faded pin-striped shirts for the I-don’t-care-I’m-an-engineering-student look. Pale, makeup-less faces and bags under eyes for the I-spend-a-lot-of-time-in-the-library-stacks-writing-my-sociology-thesis look. Faded denims mixed with washed-many-times whites for a Westsider look. Leather sandals with pilly, olive-green socks for the angry male I’m-still-a-graduate-student-after-all-these-years look. New Age-y “empowerment” silky pinks and purples and longish fingernails for the I’m-a-masseuse-and/or-devil-worshiper-and-I-also-play-the-guitarlook.

Hair Apparent: Long, healthy, just-washed locks for fresh-faced college beauties; pale, frizzy, who-cares-it’s-just-hair tangles for the studying-for-finals sociology students (see the “bags under eyes” description above); blond, Ethan Hawke dos for wholesome dorm boys; long, graying ponytails for aging New Agers; neat gray ponytails for grandmothers back to school, and proud displays of copious body hair for missing-link types.

Accessories: Backpacks; leather shoulder bags for men; silvery necklaces with dangling religious or symbolic medallions; Tarot cards; black-framed reading glasses for studious grandmothers; algebra equations scrawled on graph paper; furrowed brows and Nuart schedules.

Observations: Many slightly older New Age-y philosophers play guru to eager, earnestly blinking young couples on dates. The New Agers’ rambling, lecture-styled conversations cover topics ranging from “giving the body a chance to heal” to “the 36 different forms of water.”

Overheard: “I’ve a feeling I’m being put down by Western beliefs and philosophies.”