Hairy tales

Butterfly Pond looks more hang-out less hair salon. In one corner of the salon, where stick-on butterflies and friendly service come aplenty, sits a bar. A colour bar. This is no place for indulging your intemperance, but Sylvia Chen the owner of BP will be happy to perform some creative colour mixing tricks for you.

"No longer do customers want a single flat colour. Even classic highlights are out, today it's about clever placement "" minimum work and maximum impact, so we highlight one bit on your bangs, and two others at the nape of your neck...," she says.

Speaking of colour, it's been the year of the proliferating desi blondes. And although the streets don't indicate a break from the peroxide, Chen insists that come summer, the tones will shift to copper and deep wines. "Warmer burgundy tones are coming back in season and they are looking to replace the tired blondes," echoes Hyacinth D'Souza , Wella's technical manager.

A spokesperson for L'Oreal offers up some more variants, "Hair colour is fast becoming a fashion accessory and changes with every season. The colours for this season are currant, natural honey and milk shake pearly."

Colour manufacturers aren't complaining either way, market watchers peg the hair colour segment at Rs 492 crore with a year-on-year growth rate of 25 per cent. And neither is Chen, who says 60 per cent of all her clients come for colour jobs. Also Chen is presented with a problem that has turned itself into an opportunity.

After L'Oreal, Schwarzkopf, Godrej and Garnier loaded the mid-market consumer with their retail hair colour offerings, a large number of clients have been coming in for colour corrections, after disastrous DIY trials.

And what of the other interminable madness "" the poker-straight tress syndrome? Says Sangeeta Mahimtura, creative head at Mumbai's Juice, "This has always been a country of the straight-obsessed, but thankfully these days I see it more with either older women who've been experimenting with it for years and the very young for whom it's their first foray into experimenting with hair."

Says Chen, "We always advise our clients to work with and not work against the natural flow and texture of hair. Our consultations can last up to 30 minutes but after that if they still want their hair straightened, it's hard to say no."

However, Pratap, at Looks in New Delhi offers up hope. "More and more women are asking for layers and bounce these days. The biggest problem people come to me to tackle is flat and dead hair." (No kidding, after all the straightening!)

"Global trend-spotters know there's more to it than straightening; the unkempt look with loose textures, and geometric shapes have been in for a while now," says Mahimtura. "There is a move from asymmetrical bangs that were in vogue last year to more solid bangs," adds Chen.

Pooja Lama, a stylist with Eyecatchers on Camac Street in Kolkata, is happy to report that people are spending more on their hair, "Six months ago there would be a handful of clients a month running up bills of more than Rs 3,000. Today we have at least two big-spender customers a day."

Sujit Bhargava, a consultant at one of the four Habib's in Kolkata, also has glad tidings to report. The salon has as much as 65-70 customers come in every day, an increase of 25-30 per cent from last year. This despite the fact that in most parlours including his, prices go up by approximately 15 per cent every six months or so.

"Calcutta is becoming so much more hair conscious; people here seem to actually love change and not dread it. Also, clients today are clear what they expect from a hair make-over," he says.

Says Sangeeta Mahimtura, "Ten years ago , the fitness boom hit India and people realised that looking fit meant looking good; today people realise that great-looking hair can make all the difference."

And it's not just the women getting into a tress-tizzy. The modern day hairdressing salon is quite the gender-bender; androgyny runs rampant here. There's no shame to having bits of metal foil stuck to your head, even if you're a usually-sneering 18-year-old male.

Chen indicates that the younger men continue to be influenced by stars and that dopey straightened look single-handedly democratised by John Abraham. A version of that is doing the rounds "" wispy at the nape and temples and spiked at the crown!

Seemingly there's no longer an inviolable line that seperates what's kosher for men and women. Everything available finds takers. And if all this weaving, bonding and panel highlighting makes your hair break out in rebellion, no sweat, there's more chemical processing you can subject it to, this time of the remedial kind.

Kerastase is to hair what Jimmy Choo is to feet. The L'Oreal premium hair treatment is currently available only at two salons in the country, one in Delhi and the other in Mumbai, and from all reports it's kicked up quite a storm. "We get at least five clients a day who come in for it," says Nalini Fernandes, stylist at Mumbai's chic b:blunt.

You will be chastised if you call it a treatment, it's a ritual. Involving a two-hour procedure to strengthen hair that will set you back by Rs 2,000, it is recommended that you revisit the procedure every 15 days, and buy all the recommended hair products as well. The word on the street is that the effects of Kerastase actually last more than a few washes.

Then there's the L'Oreal spa treatment, which at Rs 750 is the poor(er) country cousin. If you can stand the embarrassment of having your dandruff discovered, you can get your scalp scrutinised, have your hair nourished, steamed and rinsed. Healthy hair until you wreck it all over again.

There's clearly no let up for Indian hair it seems... the trauma shall continue. 

Additional inputs: Gargi Gupta and Samyukta Bhowmick