TOWNANDCOUNTRYMAG.COM | SEPTEMBER 2019 91
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T
he hairstylist John Barrett
once got word that a Saudi
princess had requested a
blowout on his day off. Would he
come in? Yes. But at the agreed-
upon time, the princess was a
no-show. An hour later she
phoned. Would he come to the
Plaza? “Sure,” Barrett barked sar-
castically to his receptionist. “For
$10,000.”
No problem. An hour later
Barrett fluffed the royal tresses
while the princess did a little
shopping. Racks of couture and
trays of jewelry wafted before her,
and she chose as she went: that,
that, and that. She’ll take it all.
Barrett tells me this story as he
rhythmically slices off the ends
of my locks, shears flashing in
the sunlight of his new, art-filled
salon overlooking 57th Street.
He is one of his industry’s great
charmers, and it is not until mid-
way through this process that it
occurs to me that he commenced
cutting with nary a comment on
the decidedly nonroyal wildebeest
mop—several months past any
reasonable interval of upkeep—
with which I arrived. Come to
think of it, he commenced cut-
ting without much talk about my
hair at all. The usual precut specif-
ics—silhouette, “vibe”—simply never came up.
This is the first signal that one has entered
a realm of profoundly expensive hair. Barrett’s
core clientele have their ends “dusted” every
three weeks, at $650 a clip. Hair like theirs
is nurtured and pruned as diligently as the
greens at Augusta National.
For years “expensive” hair meant oneDo We Have Hair
in Our Face?
The rising cost of taming our manes. BY MAGGIE BULLOCK
Ewa Juszkiewicz,
Untitled (after
John Singleton
Copley), 2019RICH GIRL HAIR / PARIS SECRETS / BOTOX FACIALS