THE NEW YORKER, MAY 1,1995

The hairdresser as confidant is a well-known phenomenon, but New York's Robert Stuart has made his salon a salon where everyone joins the debate.

BY SUSAN ORLEAN

ROBERT STUART ran away from home when he was a teen-ager, used to be macrobiotic, worries that Republican welfare reform might lead to urban violence, thinks Hugh Grant is good-looking but not amazing looking, is a Nietzschean, has been faithful to his wife since they met seventeen years ago, and planned to become a social worker but ended up as a hairdresser.

I know all these things because Robert mentioned them the last time he trimmed my hair. Most of what I've told Robert about myself I don't remember, but it ran deep. Robert cuts hair at his own shop, the Robert Stuart Salon, on Amsterdam Avenue at Eighty-fourth Street, in a skinny storefront about the size of a subway car, with strawberry blond walls and five wide black barber chairs. The place has a pearly sleekness, but it's cozy. If you are sitting on the banquette near the door and you speak emphatically, someone having a heir wash in the back can answer you: everything in the place is within earshot.

Robert, who is forty-three years old, has been in business on Amsterdam Avenue for fourteen years. For the first ten years, he was in a bigger space, a few blocks south. He moved into his current storefront four years ago. It was previously occupied by Mario the shoemaker, who now has a place up the block. I happen to patronize Mario, too, but our conversations rarely advance past the subject of rubber soles. This is not a reflection of' Mario, who is affable enough although' he's never run his fingers through m hai~as much as a reflection on my r' lationship with Robert and the kind place he runs. It is a sort of salon of s ions, an ongoing symposium involvi Robert, his assistants, his clients, a, whoever else walks in the door. The majority of Robert's customers are professional people who live in the neighbor, hood or work nearby–somewherd between Lincoln Center and Columbus University. Many of his regulars are actors, dancers, writers, casting directors art dealers, or youngish lawyers–people who appreciate stylish haircuts but need to look as if they could hold a job. Many of them are big talkers and don't need much head-massaging to open up to Robert or, as often happens, to one another. Robert himself may be the biggest talker of all. He turns out to be a perfect master of ceremonies, in a compact, ideally proportioned forum, in a neighborhood of chatterboxes, at a moment when the success of confessional television shows and call-in radio programs suggests that people are especially curious about each other and are ful1 of their own opinions and raring to talk. Every time I've been in the salon, I have stepped knee deep into a conversational current that moves swiftly from, say, spiritualism to cream rinse to Oedipal struggle. Between the gushing of his customers, the roaring of the blow-dryers, the trilling of the telephone, and Robert's own conversational flow, the salon is a river of constant noise.

ROBERT thinks women are great. Most of his clients are women, although he does cut hair for a lot of men. Whenever men are in the salon, they are expected to act like women–that is, to speak frankly and openly about personal, intellectual, and political matters and, at the same time, make informed decisions about their hair. One day not long ago, Robert was saying that he felt that his cognitive identify was at least as much female as male, which meant, essentially, that he was paying himself a compliment. There were half a dozen people in the salon at the time, including his wife, Valerie, who was working that day as the receptionist. (Robert's regular receptionists are Nancy Bender, a singer who is sometimes hired to perform as a life-size Barbie doll at parties; Roberta Willison, an actress who was in London just then studying with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Miguel Garcia, a former Eastern Airlines flight attendant who is between jobs.) Robert then said that he'd noticed that in his group-therapy sessions–he has been in every kind of therapy but likes group the most–the women were much more able to open up than the men, and that he considered his sentimental nature and his enthusiasm for conversation to be fundamental feminine traits. He happened to be cutting a guy's hair at the time, and he paused, with one hand steadying the guy's head forward so he could trim the fringe along his neck; his other arm was outstretched, and the needle-nosed silver scissors he held were glinting in the light. A few minutes earlier, Robert had been moderating a discussion of violence in film– he's against it–and saying how proud he was that his fifteen-year-old son hadn't liked "Pulp Fiction." "Jeremiah and I walked out of 'Pulp Fiction,' n he'd said. "We went to see 'Little Women' instead. I loved it. I cried."

Guy in the chair "Really? I thought 'Pulp Fiction' was great. Of course, I grew up watching violence on television."

Robert: "See, I have a hard time with that. Don't you think we're becoming a society that is getting too used to violence? And humor with violence–that really scares me. I don't want to go too, too short in the back today. On the other hand, if it's short on top and too bushy in back, it gets sort of Brooklynish–you know whet I'm saying?"

Guy "Definitely. The Pentagon did a study of bombardiers in the Gulf War "

Woman in the next chair, having highlights done, her head bristling with tinfoil leaves full of hair dye: "I heard about that study and–well, I'm a television producer, and it makes me really think about my profession and its role in where society is going."

 

Robert: "You know, since you're in such a powerful industry, in television, you really affect people's lives. I envy that. Making an impact, that's what it's about, isn't it? Sit still–I'm going to go over your sideburns now."

 

ROBERT is short, wiry, and jaunty. He has bright brown eyes, olive skin, and thick, glossy, highly manageable dark hair, which he wears loose and longish, so it hangs over his ears. Ninety-nine per cent of the time that Robert and I have spent together, I've been dressed in one of the shop's black floppy robes. A hundred per cent of the time, he's been wearing a pair of cotton-twill pants and a rayon camp shirt–usually vintage, and usually the kind that Ricky Ricardo wore around the house on "I Love Lucy." He owns one suit. I know this because one day the subject came up while he was cutting the curry blond hair of a women who teaches law and researches feminist legal theory at Columbia.

Robert: "So, you just got married, right? Tell me about it. How was the wedding? How was your family? Were they supportive? It's so interesting to me that you had a real seriously traditional wedding. Do you think tradition is coming back?"

Law professor: "You know, I really wonder. I never thought I'd want that kind of wedding, but it really mattered. I thought I'd feel funny, but I didn't. It was great.

Robert: "I love ceremonies. When our kids were born, we had everything–a bris, a baptism, everything. After I'm done today, I'm going to a bar mitzvah. I brought my one suit. It's like a joke in my family. Oh, here's Robert and here's Robert's one suit."

Everything Robert says, he says with overwhelming earnestness. In his presence, you feel that everything is important and everything is at stake–the direction of society, the length of your bangs, the quest for self-awareness. He i a stirring storyteller. His accent is memorable; it involves relocating "r"s whenever possible, in the old-fashioned New York way. He now lives in Tenafly, New Jersey, but he is a native of the neighborhood. He grew up twenty blocks north of the salon; his father owned a jewelry store on the Lower East Side.

 

Robert has a handsome, sturdy aspect, but he is also quite excitable. One day, several of us in the shop were talking about anxiety–someone getting highlights done started the discourse by saying she'd lately become insomniac–and Robert mentioned that he'd twice gone to the emergency room in a panic because he thought he was having a heart attack. The first time was when he had a steak after years of being macrobiotic; the heart attack turned out to be gas pains. The second time was before traveling overseas to meet his mother-in-law. Valerie is F1ipino, and Robert figured her mother might have never before met anyone Jewish, and then he began obsessing over the possibility that while he was in the Philippines he would be kidnapped by zealous Christians who would try to convert him. This heart attack turned out to be pure anxiety. Robert has a restless mine and what used to be called a vivid imagination. He also happens to be dyslexic and recently he was found to have attention-deficit disorder. For several weeks after that diagnosis, A.D.D. was the big topic in the salon, and many of his clients became convinced that they might be suffering from it, too. One day, I walked in while he was finishing cutting the hair of a country-and-Western singer, who was describing how she, too, had trouble concentrating. Robert was snipping the last pieces around her ear. "I don't know," she was saying. "I just can't get focused. My mind goes back and forth."

"Exactly," Robert said. "I read the same page in a book over and over again."

Just then, the woman caught a glimpse in the mirror of the tableau that included Robert, his sharp scissors, and her temples. "You, um, can concentrate, can't you?" she said, suddenly rigid. "I mean, you're holding blades against people's heads all day."

"Me?" Robert asked. "Oh, not really. I can barely concentrate at all.

One recent Saturday, I sat in the salon, got my hair washed, and then sat in the salon for the rest of the day.

Alice Burress, a television-commercial director: 'Tm having a one-step and a cut."

Robert: "A single-process, you mean."

Alice: "That's what I mean. A single." To Roberta Willison, the receptionist: "Did you know that my mom comes up every six weeks from North Carolina to have Robert cut her hair? And now she brings all her friends. Robert got them all to get out of those old Southern booPy-dos. Now Robert's got me in one of those 'Beverly Hills -90210' shaggy cuts."

Robert: "I think of it more as Jane Fonda in 'Klute,' sort of shaggy-messy. So how are you, Alice? How's life?"

Alice: "I'm good. I'm bidding on a Kellogg's commercial in Milan, so I was going to ask you about Italian people, since I know you were in Italy on vacation. I'll be directing people in Italian, but I don't speak Italian. It's an American product, so they want an American director, because they think of Americans as more humanistic."

Robert: Do you want to do features?"

Alice, sighing: 'Well, I want to, but I think to do features you need a lot of life experience."

Robert: "Don't cross your legs. It makes it uneven. Don't you think you have life experience?"

Alice: "Oh, no–not really. I mean, I've been in school my whole life. I haven't really been out there."

Robert: "It's really amazing to me that you can say that. It shows real strength that you can see that in yourself. You're so open. That's probably why you're good."

Alice: "I think I get some of my jobs because they want a woman."

Robert: "Maybe it's the sensitivity that women have that they're looking for."

Roberta: "Or maybe that a woman wouldn't make as strong a statement. Maybe it's not such a compliment."

Richard Scott, one of the hair colorists: "Roberta, I was just thinking, with your looks and your manner, you're a walking Merchant-Ivory film."

Molly Haskell, the film critic and writer, who is waiting for her appointment: "You know, I showed some thirties screwball comedies to my class at Columbia this semester, and they really showed how much power the women of that era had–for example, the power of knowing they could say no. Now women are just expected to be sexually available, and, instead of it giving them more power, it gives them less."

Joanna Wolper, a television producer, who has just walked in: "Are you Molly? You were my first guest on my television show!"

Robert is now done with Alice and is cutting the hair of a ninth-grade girl named Anna Gay, who has also decided to get a Jane Fonda-in-"Klute" hairdo. Anna is watching herself in the mirror and appears paralyzed. Her mother, sitting on the banquette near the door, keeps telling her that she looks great. Robert finishes and says to her that she looks great. She looks as if she were about to cry. "You're going to hate me for a day," he says to her. "But then you'l1 be O.K., because everyone will tell you how great you look. You are going to hate me, but I can take it."

Molly: "Doesn't it kill you to see a girl getting her hair cut? It's such a powerful memory, your haircuts when you were a kid. And the reaction of your mother. My mother is always telling me how she liked my hair better "before,' and the 'before' is always some imaginary time that never was."

Robert: "My father had to drag me to the barber, kicking and screaming. Of course, with my family, every thing I did I did kicking and screaming."

In comes a pock-faced man selling packages of aerosol pepper spray, which he offers to Robert and Richard, saying, "Gentlemen, perhaps you'd like one as a gift to your wives or girlfriends?" Robert shakes his head, and the man shrugs and leaves. The door opens again, and Mimi Turque, who plays the mother in the Broadway production of"Kiss ofthe Spider Woman," enters. She is here to tell Robert that her recent haircut was a success. "My husband fell over!" she exclaims. "The hair stylist for the show fell over! Everyone fell over!"

Robert says, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm just so happy for you," and waves goodbye to her with his blow-dryer.

The salon fills, empties, and fills again. Over the next few hours, the conversation wanders: the feminist art historian Linda Nochlin tells a story about how she had her hair dyed when she was in Italy and it all broke off and she had to buy a wig–to Tanya Anticevic, an actress and a preschool teacher at Blessed Sacrament, who has just tried dyeing her own hair, which turned green, forcing her to wear a hat to school for a week until today, when she had time to come in and have it dyed back to her own color, which is especially important because she is about to audition for some movie agents; and in the next chair Ruth Kramer, a journalist who is leaving for London tonight to begin a book tour, is getting her hair blow-dried and is half listening to Linda and half-listening to Robert, who is telling her how smart she is to keep her hair gray, but then he is interrupted by Denise Bethel, an auctioneer at Sotheby's, who has just stopped by to show him an Atget photograph–he loves Atget–and is about to leave when Linda, overhearing her, begins debating with her whether Atget would qualify as "rare" or just "subtle"; and while they are talking John Winer, a real-estate investment banker, shows up for his appointment, and he and Robert begin a conversation about the psychological implications of being touched by service professionals–that is, dentists, hairdressers, manicurists–and John tries to convince Robert that he should get a massage, even though Robert thinks if he had one he might throw up, because he thinks he holds too much inside emotionally;