The Unkindest Cut
Mara Kurtz
Author’s wedding photo in The New York Times
Word Count 679
As I thought about my wedding, just thirteen days away, I felt sure I’d taken care of everything. But as I walked out of my fiance’s apartment on East 67th Street and turned onto Madison Avenue, I looked across the street at the recently opened Vidal Sassoon hair salon and realized I hadn’t given a thought to my hair. I always loved my dark shiny hair and wore it long and straight, way below my shoulders. Rarely visiting a salon, I only bothered with an occasional trim. But, crossing the street and looking at my reflection in Sassoon’s large window, I could see that the bottom strands were looking a bit scruffy and uneven.
I’d recently read feature stories about Vidal Sassoon in the New York press. The exceptional reviews claimed he’d “changed the world with a pair of scissors,” introducing his “simple geometric Bauhaus-inspired hairstyles.”
He suddenly became the hairdresser for a variety of famous people, “including clothes designer Mary Quant whose miniskirt designs were perfectly balanced by his "five-point" bob haircut,” and actress Mia Farrow, whose urchin cut was made famous in Roman Polanski's movie Rosemary's Baby.
Sassoon was described as "a rock star, an artist, a craftsman.” He became the most celebrated hairdresser in the world.
I walked up to the desk at the front of the sprawling room filled with elegant salon chairs and chic women and made an appointment for later that day. The receptionist assured me I could have just the “simple trim” I requested.
When I returned, an elegant manager brought me to a private dressing room containing a silk loveseat and coffee table and handed me a navy silk kimono. After my shampoo, she returned and accompanied me to meet Richard, my stylist. Tall and reed-thin, he greeted me wearing all black, his long blonde hair slicked back in a ponytail. I explained that I would be getting married in two weeks and simply wanted a two-inch trim with no layers. I even said, laughing, “No new style, and please don’t get carried away with the scissors.” He smiled and nodded.
After draping a spotless white apron over my robe, he handed me a copy of Vogue and told me to just sit back and relax.
As Richard divided my wet hair into even sections, I began to look through the magazine. Glancing up occasionally, I could see him carefully trimming the bottom edge of my hair, removing about two inches just as I’d requested.
After a while, I noticed that two assistants from nearby stations had walked over to stand behind Richard and watch as he worked. Then a third joined them. I wondered what they were looking at and why cutting two inches of straight hair could possibly be interesting. Nevertheless, when Richard said, “Voila,” all three clapped and smiled as he handed me a mirror and swung my chair around, enabling me to see the back of my head.
It is impossible to describe the horror I experienced at the sight of what he’d done. While the back of my hair appeared long from a distance, he’d actually created a four-inch round section of very short hair at the crown that resembled the yarmulke worn by Orthodox Jews or the skullcap worn by the Pope.
Feeling hysterical, I flew from the chair and managed to find my clothes and dress quickly. As I ran through the salon, I felt certain everyone was looking at me. I considered leaving without paying the bill but stopped to give the receptionist my credit card, avoiding all eye contact.
I cried for days, experiencing so much humiliation that I seriously considered postponing my wedding. But my husband-to-be, though sympathetic, would not hear of it. In the end, my former hairdresser managed to create a style for the ceremony that camouflaged the absurd “geometric Bauhaus-inspired hairstyle” well enough.
In all the years since that day at Vidal Sassoon, I have never again sat in the chair of a beauty salon without reliving the terror of “the cut.”
Mara is a graphic designer, photographer, and illustrator, and founder of Mara Kurtz Studio. Her work has been published in numerous publications, including Metropolis, New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, and The Wall Street Journal. She has been a Professor at Parsons School of Design, The New School, NYU, and School of Visual Arts since 1990. She is a graduate of New York University and Parsons School of Design. She received an MA from The New School in 1995. Rock Hill Pictures, a book of Mara's documentary photographs, was published in 2012.