|
Eight-year-old Carly Brown gazes upon the foiled head of Jon Harrison, 20, of Raleigh, as he does his time under the dryer
at Sam and Bill's Hair Design in Raleigh.
STAFF PHOTOS BY TRAVIS LONG
|
Ma! There's a boy in here!
Clarke Otte picks up a 6-pack - a salon term for a batch of foil
highlights - at Sam and Bill's.
|
BY KAREN GUZMAN STAFF WRITER
RALEIGH - They come to the hair salon, unabashed on this hot morning, because they are men of the future, and the future, as any stylist will tell you, has arrived in living color.
"I've highlighted my hair since middle school," Clark Otte, 26, says from beneath a gleaming helmet of foil wraps.
Otte started coloring on the sly, spraying Sun-In, that favorite brassy product of fumbling adolescents, onto his blond hair and baking his head in the sun.
This year, the design engineer from Apex turned to the pros. Like many natural blonds, Otte's hair darkened with age, and he missed the golden sparks that used to frame his face.
|
Of the cosmetic cavemen who snicker and flex their biceps at the mere mention of men's hair color, Otte says: "It doesn't bother me at all. They bust my chops all the time. My boss got a kick out of it when I told him I was taking time off work today to get my hair highlighted."
Just as they have taken to skin care, manicures and massage, some men have taken on hair color as the new fashion frontier. These "metrosexuals" - a term marketers have coined for straight, urban style conscious men - are showing up in salons for bleaching, streaking and glossing - stereotypical notions of manhood be damned.
Otte is one of three young men getting touched up at Sam
SEE HAIR, PAGE 10C
|
|
|
HAIR
Continued from page 1C
&Bill's Place this morning.
Shop owner Sandy Brown estimates that 20 percent of her clientele is men getting hair color. "Most guys want one or two foils in their hair - 12 at the most. We call them 6-packs," Brown says.
"They usually leave loving it," adds stylist Stephanie Sherwood, as she coats Otte's clipped hair with the gooey color solution.
Sherwood sparked up an 8-yearold boy's brown head with a couple of foils earlier in the week. "He was here with his mom, and I had the time to do them," she says. "He loved them. He thought he was a movie star. He had a stylin' haircut going, too."
When 8-year-old boys can color their hair without the fear of a playground beating, you know the world's a changing place.
Men today are where women were 10 years ago, according to Patrick McIvor, a New York City stylist who travels the globe teaching color technique. In the early '90s, he says, "all of a sudden 12- , 13-, 14-year-old girls started coloring their hair."
Their female elders - many closet colorers - took the hint and publicly embraced the foil.
Likewise, boys today are leading the men's hair color charge, mimicking skateboard stars, edgy rock bands and movie celebrities.
|
McIvor points to bands like Blink-182, Linkin Park and the Red Hot Chili Peppers with members'
preponderance of spiky cuts and frosted tips. "There's nothing that's not masculine about them. They're cool. They don't have their hair colored like Liberace did," he says.
Therein lies the crucial difference between men's and women's hair color.
"You're never doing a guy's hair color to make him look pretty. You're doing it to make him look cool," McIvor explains. A subtle prettiness - a la Eminem or Brad Pitt - is OK, but nothing more.
At Sam &Bill's, 20-year-old Jon Harrison says he's dabbled in a few styles.
"In high school I was in that alternative crowd," says the lanky Wake Technical Community College student. "I'd never colored my hair, and then I had a friend who did it, and it looked like fun." He's getting his auburn and copper highlights retouched today, and adding a 6-pack of blond highlights.
"My girlfriend likes it," he says. He plans to keep his color. So does Andy Lund, the guy sitting across from Harrison.
The salon puts only two color clients in a room at the same time, a privacy that male clients especially appreciate.
Lund, 30, of Cary, is getting his gray covered. He put up with it for a couple of years, growing saltier and saltier.
|
"I'd never thought about getting my hair colored," he says, "but my fiance said, 'Just go ahead and do it.' "
Andy Lund, 30, is gonna wash that gray right out of his hair, with the help of a colorist.
STAFF PHOTO BY TRAVIS LONG
Now he's happily hooked. "I'm fine with it," he says. "I always joked I'm gonna go buy Grecian Formula, but I have women advisors who advised against it."
The key for this convert was his stylist's low-key approach. "These guys make me feel so comfortable," he says. "I wouldn't go just anywhere."
Lund is getting his hair rinsed, when Otte pops in to say good-bye to Brown. He's grinning. His hair gleams in strategic, sun-kissed spots, the unmistakable handiwork of either genetics or a qualified professional.
Otte's had them both, so he knows. He smiles and turns for the door, as pleased as can be.
Staff writer Karen Guzman
can be reached at 829-4752
or kguzman@newsobserver.com.
|
|
Reprint permission granted by the News and Observer of Raleigh NC. Reprint permission does not imply indorsment.
Click here to return to previous page.
|
