|
  
Viviscal In Vogue Magazine
RAPUNZEL CALLING
Long hair is in the air. But is it professional - or even acceptable - beyond a certain age?
Julie Grau confesses her lust for length.
I was sitting in a meeting with a woman I'd never met before. She was in the music industry, and about my age. Though the meeting was strictly business - I was publishing a book about her superstar client; she was checking me out I was unable to focus on little else beside her hair. Ah! That hair! Nearly waist - length and dark as espresso, it cascaded - the only word that applies past her shoulders, in long layers that ended in gentle bends. Her hair made my own, which has hung around my shoulders for decades, appear ridiculously safe, boring.
I walked her to the elevator at the end of our meeting. "Now I have to ask you something really important," I said. "Who cuts your hair?"
"His name is Roy Teeluck. I’ll E-mail you," she said as the elevator doors closed. I headed back to my office wondering how long it would take to grow my hair the five inches she had on me. Then, fast on the heels of that thought, came another. Was I too old for such long hair? Down the hallway I discussed this with myself:
- We're about the same age, and she still has long hair.
- Yes, but she s in the rock 'n 'roll business - you're in publishing, for God's sake.
- But she’s completely professional - she ran that meeting like a drill sergeant.
- But all you could think about was when it would be appropriate to ask for the number of her stylist. Do you want people to be listening to you in a meeting, or listening to your hair?
I had a point. But I didn't care. Long hair was in the air. I could feel it.
According to this fall's runways - where endless locks reigned supreme - I was right. From the Modish, middle - parted, ironed - straight school - girl hair at Chanel to the SoCal hippie look of Habitual to the beatnik chicks at Dior, every model, it seemed, had grown her hair long - really long - overnight. Natalia Vodianova, Hana Soukupova, Gemma Ward, and Jacquetta Wheeler tout de suite had hair falling four, five inches past their shoulders (admittedly, some of it was extensions). With her wild, strawberry waves, Renaissance redhead Lily Cole looked like she just stepped out of a clam shell, while Ruslana (the eighteen year old model whose waist-length hair had reached past her knees, heading dangerously close to her ankles, until she cut it for the first time last year) might just have awakened from an enchanted 100-year sleep. Even Scottish beauty Kirsty Hume, whose flat sheets of platinum hair once reached all the way down her back (until she fearlessly allowed Sally Hershberger to chop it all off in the name of fashion), is once more going long.
"All the girls want long hair now," says Harry Josh, a hairstylist based in New York and Los Angeles whose stellar roster of clients includes Hillary Swank (whose chestnut hair, as I write, approaches her Academy Award-winning glutes), teen phenom Lindsay Lohan, and Gisele Biindchen-who is widely credited with inspiring the shift toward what he calls "bodacious hair." Josh dates his obsession to the sixties and the Barbarella hair (and hairpieces) of his youth. His preference shows up in the casting work he does for the Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton shows each season. "Lately we've been casting models who are so young and innocent-fifteen, sixteen, seventeen-and they typically have long, uncolored, virgin hair. It's quite something to work with," he says.
Excuse me, Harry, but what doesn't look good on a seventeen-year-old model? What about those of us who can talk about their careers in terms of decades? Josh seemed to be making the case that long hair, like many other indulgences, was best left to the young. "Absolutely not. I've never believed in the stereotype that at a certain age a woman has to cut her hair," he insists. "Look at Demi Moore-she's the perfect example of looking great with long hair over 40."
"The age factor is totally bogus," agrees Orlando Pita, who styled Ruslana's hair for this story and who wears his own hair (dark, thick waves any woman would envy) shoulder-length or longer. "Beautiful hair is beautiful hair. Short hair cut like a helmet can make a young woman look old. If you have good hair, why shouldn't you wear it long?" Pita opened Orlo, his own salon in Manhattan, last year in order to work with a range of women, the famous and not famous alike. "Women want long hair because it feels good, it swings, it feels sexy on your back. Whether it will flatter you is all about the cut," he says.
Oscar Blandi, whose Madison Avenue salon hosts its own share of famous heads (he once lent me clip-on extensions from his Jennifer Garner all purpose traveling hair bag, which was a close second to my dentist's using Famke Janssen's leftover bonding composite to mend my chipped tooth), thinks long hair can be a tricky business. He keeps an eye on a client's overall carriage and proportions. "For example, if a person is short and she wears her hair down to her waist, it can make her look even shorter," he says. Even good hair can go bad if the length and volume aren't managed properly: Lovely Botticelli curls left to run amok can create an unflattering pyramid shape that is more Twisted Sister than wood nymph.
Yet in me, the Single White Female-style infatuation persists, despite Blandi's sound cautionary tales. I realize it isn't just my new insta-friend's hair I am after but also the bravado to pull it off. I take her recommendation and see the man responsible for her look.
Roy Teeluck ran Frederic Fekkai's salon in L.A. before moving to New York to open his own place on East Fifty-seventh Street a few years ago. He is slim, handsome, and reassuring-all good qualities in a stylist-and his own straight black hair swings insouciantly in his face. Teeluck comes down firmly in the Pita camp when it comes to age-related hair issues. "There's no such thing," he says in response to my query about whether there exists a point in a woman's life when she ought to question the length of her hair. "Ages are getting pushed back. Forty now isn't what 40 used to be. Neither is 50 or even 60. There is such a thing as being hot at 60," he says with a knowing smile.
Teeluck cuts long layers into my hair and slices off a pretty fringe of bangs that taper off across my cheekbones. This is what every stylist I spoke with means when they say it's all about the cut-long, flattering, face-framing pieces that counteract the downward pull droopy hair can have on a post-teen face (what Harry Josh terms "the Afghan-hound look"). Teeluck blows my subtle layers straight, but with a little lift at the roots and a little swing on the ends. He smooths a fine coat of L 'Oreal Liss Extreme over my hair -a must-have finishing serum I have come to call "Liquid Kevlar" for its potent anti-frizz properties. But he's still not satisfied; we haven't yet achieved his vision. He wants to see my hair, which is already a few inches beyond shoulder- length (the longest it's been since puberty struck), grow past the middle of my back. South of the bra strap is my goal, too.
Getting there, however, is a painstaking process. Harry Josh has been recommending Viviscal tablets to his clients for years. Viviscal is a supplement that contains fish oil, a natural stimulant that is good for hair, skin, and nails. According to Josh, oil pushes the hair through the follicles so it grows faster. It's not cheap--a one-month supply costs about $80, and you see results in the form of faster-growing hair, not more hair, in about three months-but he vouches for the results: "I've recommended it to everyone at one point or another -Gisele, Cameron, Demi-whether they wanted to get over a haircut they didn't like or wanted longer hair faster."
Still, hanging in the air remains the question relevant for everyone who isn't famous, in fashion, or in rock 'n' roll: Does long hair undermine a woman's professional credibility? In the early nineties, I was part of a start-up company that was featured on the front page of The New York Times business section with a huge photo of its five principals, all women with, we thought, fabulous hair. In my industry, that image was famously, derisively referred to as "the Hair Picture." It haunts me still.
So far, on my list of professions for which long hair is acceptable, there is rock-star manager, model, actress, hippie, male hairstylist, fairy-tale protagonist. Not a publisher in the bunch. Pita tells me, basically, to get over it. "You shouldn't pick your look because of a few meetings," he says. "You can always tie your hair back." I hook my arm behind my back and grab the ends with my fingers, checking to see if it's grown another inch yet - a habit retrieved from girlhood.
When the time comes to cut it (I'll know, says Roy), I will make Orlando Pita my role model. Two years ago, when his hair reached the small of his back, he cut it off and donated it to Locks of Love, an organization that makes wigs for children who've lost their hair as a result of illness. What beautiful redemption for years of careful vanity.
This article orginally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Vogue Magazine.
More information on hair donation for children with illness through Locks Of Love can be found here.
Our Price: $49.95 Per Box
|
