Customs: Handsome Is

Barbershops ain't what they used to be. The once familiar "thin it out some on top, and no machine on the sides" has given way to an operation that sometimes lasts three hours, may include everything from a permanent wave to an eyelash tint, and can cost as much as twenty bucks. Like ruffled shirt fronts and cuff links the size of poker chips, it all seems to have started in Hollywood.

When a Hollywood type says, "I see you've been to Sebring," he doesn't mean the sports-car races. He is talking about Jay Sebring, 28, the Alabama-born boy who has become dictator of the nape-line, tyrant of the sideburn, and keeper of the keys to baldpate for a list of notables that begins with Frank Sinatra and ends with Bobby Darin (they have a similar problem) and includes Milton Berle, Marlon Brando and Sammy Davis Jr.

Wet, Dry. Sebring's establishment, which has doubled in size since he first set up shop in 1959 (last year he grossed about $50,000, expects to do $100,000 this year), is a ten-chair, swinging bedlam, with a hi-fi dishing out a diet of progressive jazz and the recorded works of Frankie and other customers. It has a red and black floor, Indian brass hanging lamps, paneled partitions and—in Sebring's private cell—velvet drapes. A visit begins with a mandatory shampoo (Sebring, like most of the "new wave" of barbers, prefers to work on damp hair).

If it is a customer's first time, then the master himself will study the mass of wet hair for several minutes, like a sculptor contemplating a virgin block of granite.

He riffles the hair with a comb, examining density and flow; then he begins to cut.

New customers almost always leave the shop restyled. Parts disappear or shift sides; the hair may be shorter, the sides fuller. For this attention Sebring gets $15 for the first visit, $10 subsequently.

But one Sebring dictum must be strictly observed: "Oil is for machinery and moving parts; unless you have a screw loose, it has no place on the head." Cigars, Facials. Chicago, for all its Midwestern spittoons-on-the-floor masculinity, has at least two beauty shops for men. Biggest is Bayard's Hair Studio, where it is not an uncommon sight to see a husky customer sitting with a cigar in his mouth and a hairnet on his head, as an operator uses a hand dryer to finish up his permanent wave. Owner Tom Bayard (who wears one of the toupees he specializes in—wavy black with a few grey strands) got the idea for a men-only beauty parlor when he was operating a ladies-only establishment before World War II. Men came in and asked if he would cut their hair. Says Bayard: "Later, when I was in the Naval Air Corps, I saw how vain some of my shipmates were, always standing in front of the mirror combing their hair. I knew I was right." At Bayard's Studio, a man can get his hair cut and styled, shampooed and reset in about 45 minutes for $3.75. A permanent wave is $12 to $15; lash and eyebrow tint, $1.75; toupees run from $275 to $300. No shaves. No shines.

Toupees, Tints. One of the poshest tonsorial emporiums in Manhattan is "Christopher Joyce," on Madison Avenue.