The George Effect

The following is the text of my column, Deeply Superficial, in the (sydney) magazine this week:

I don’t know where the idea of the male hairdresser as sex god came about but certainly Warren Beatty gave the notion currency in his sensational performance as the promiscuous George in Hal Ashby’s 1975 movie Shampoo. Thanks to Beatty, since then just about every straight hair stylist on the planet seems to have modelled himself after George who, in turn, (a little bit of trivia here) was himself modelled on sixties hairdresser-to-the-stars Jay Sebring, more famous now for being murdered with his old girlfriend Sharon Tate when the Manson Family came calling in 1969. I’m sure straight male hairdressers don’t expect Sebring’s fate but they do rather fancy his life – an endless stream of beautiful, available women, fast-cars, rock-star celebrity and a working wardrobe of tight leather pants. If you think I’m wrong about this, consider how many male hairdressers you run across who look like Kevin Rudd.

Clearly, there is something sexual about having a woman trembling and vulnerable in your hands and the women rather like it too, especially if you dress like Jim Morrison. The “service” provided sometimes is less about getting rid of split ends and more about buying an attractive man’s total attention for an hour or so. George actually offered his special clients a shag with their shag cut – they may not go that far in South Yarra or Surry Hills, but a little bit of flirtation with your foils make the hefty cost of the experience so much more palatable.

But I am digressing because I want to talk about Frédéric Fekkai, internationally famous hairstylist, and the man most often these days given the George comparison. (Although Jonathan Antin, of Arena’s reality series Blow Out, must be a close second.) Fekkai was in Australia recently to promote his expansive range of hair care products, which are available nationally at Mecca Cosmetica and to launch his Ageless three-step regimen for aging and thinning hair. A native Frenchman of Moroccan background, he came into hairdressing by a circuitous route – he accepted a small acting role on a film to help him pay his way through law school and on the set became fascinated with the work of the hair stylists. He tossed his degree and moved from Provence to Paris to learn his craft. In the late eighties he went to New York, where he launched a salon in Bergdorf Goodman and, in 1996, his own salon and spa on 57th Street. Now he has salons and spas in Beverly Hills and Palm Beach and counts among his clients Scarlett Johansson, Heidi Klum, Debra Messing, Salma Hayek and Penelope Cruz.

It’s not a bad career move for a hairdresser to be handsome, charming and blessed with an exotic accent. But Fekkai’s real skill seems to be in making his clients feel that they absolutely the centre of his attention. He has his client stand up while he cuts her hair, so that he can see her silhouette, her body language – the total woman. He is also liberal with his advice on how his client should dress and how she should do her makeup. (I bet those New York dames are putty in his hands.) In person, he’s different to what I expected – intelligent, elegant, relaxed, and very un-George, with no sign of George’s leather pants or chestwig-baring shirts. And he diverges from George in the matter of commitment – last year he got married for the second time, to YSL PR rep Shirin von Wulffen.

His message about beauty is what we want to hear. “Its important that today a very sophisticated woman is not just trendy. What matters is what looks sensational on you.” If there is a trend today, he says, it’s to customise. Hair length and colour are ageless, as long as it suits you. The best news? In his New York salon, he still leaves a few slots in his schedule open for new, non-celebrity clients. “The most exciting thing is when you see someone for the first time. You give them the best you can,” he says. So go for it, girls…