Caroline in Paris

I’ve been passing by this hair salon around the corner for nearly a year now. Penny first pointed it out to me; when she lived in this neighborhood she went there.

Now, that’s a good enough recommendation for me, generally speaking, so I made a little deal with myself: I would go to the “English Spoken” place down the street once, try to pick up as much hair-cutting vocabulary as possible, then try out Penny’s place.

That plan, of course, developed a wrinkle nice and quickly. I met this woman named Mariela, my “americane du coeur,” and she dragged me into the salon in question herself. That’s not what put me off; she’s a stylish woman who used to run a modeling agency. I figure she knows her stuff. The problem, though, was that when she introduced me to the owner, he and I couldn’t talk at all. He doesn’t speak English, I don’t speak Vietnamese, and neither of us spoke enough French to do much more than smile and nod. Mariela did all the work, and I’ve been carrying around the salon’s card ever since while meekly accepting the mediocre haircuts and blatant overcharging at “English Spoken.”

And I do mean blatant: when I asked the guy why the price was higher than the one posted in the window, he started with, “Oh, well that is for the basic cut. It doesn’t include–” and ended with awkward stammering as he struggled to think of anything he could claim to have done to my hair that wouldn’t count as “basic.” I had extra incentive to keep going, though: the guy used to do the thermal reconditioning process I’m hooked on in Florida, and wants to start doing it here, and planning trips to New York every eight or nine months is just downright impractical.

Anyway, lately I’ve been running out of some of my stockpiled American products, and started trying to take it on faith that French women most likely have most of the same health and grooming needs as I do. There have been some surprises (my antiperspirant proudly declares that it lasts for 48 hours, for instance–why?), but for the most part, it turns out to be true.

Plus, one of the guys who works at Penny and Mariela’s salon fusses over Jolie every time we walk by, and guilt is as powerful a motivator as vanity and thrift combined. So I scouted the place until I had figured out their least busy times, then took advantage of one of them to walk in and make an appointment.

I was a little nervous, but the guy who likes Jolie spotted me just as I was settling into another stylists’ chair, and waved me over to his instead–it was almost like being a regular. Plus, he spoke a bit of English, although by now, halfway through the third Harry Potter book, I’ve learned enough hair-related adjectives that he probably didn’t even need to.

It was definitely a step up from “English Spoken”: “About here, I think?” he said, indicating a random medium length that happens to be particularly flattering on me, and–well, anyway, it’s really cute now. Oh, and he does the thermal reconditioning himself.

He does it for literally a tenth of what I pay in New York.

Apparently, here they charge by the tube of product used, rather than by the four hours of the stylists’ time plus the product used.

Kinda neat, that.