I'm innocently walking back from Whole Foods during my lunch break in beautiful downtown Palo Alto. A gentleman comes up behind me, mistaking me for a girl from Germany...a hair model...he thinks he has a picture of her in his bag somewhere...can't find it. But he says I look exactly like her and if he can find the picture I can keep it to "show my family".
In that bag/briefcase/portfolio thing, there are all these pictures of models, etc...This guy says he does supermodels' hair for a living. I think he's full of crap and he's trying to pick up on me or something--oh ya, to top it all off he has a French accent! Then one of the pictures he has is of him styling Cindy Crawford's hair...Of course i tell him I think she's incredibly annoying, he says she's nice and I'd like her if I met her--I said no thanks, she seems stupid! He has another picture of Demi Moore (he's not in it) but he said he did her hair for the shoot...I say that I LOVE her and he says she's great too--"she's CRAZY! She was so much fun to work with.."
So he says he's a hair artist...he thinks I have great hair and a nice face and great facial "lines" to work with...he wants to cut my hair. He SAYS he's only done this kind of thing once before because he gets paid $1000 per haircut by the big time model people and why would he pull someone off the street. The first time he did it was at a fashion show where he only had to do hair for 2 models and they were finished and he was bored; he looked out into the crowd and saw this beautiful woman in the front row--her hair looked like crap. He had someone go out and get her and bring her back stage (supposedly she knew who he was) and he cut her hair for free... He wants to cut mine for free also.
Hmmmm...I don't know this guy, the only "proof" i have that he's even a hairstylist, excuse me--artist, is the picture with Cindy...I'm very attached to my hair--I've had it long since I was 16 or so. I tell him I like having long hair--he "understands that" but "he could make me look better than I ever thought I could." If I just want it cut below my shoulders, he'll pay for someone else to do it or tell me not to do it at all because really long hair is better than kind of long hair. He wants to design my hair. I want to know what he means exactly.
We start to walk towards my office. He says we need to find somewhere off the street because "if anyone sees me doing your hair for free then my prices will plummet." I get kinda suspicious...I'm not going in to some dark alleyway with this guy. We end up going into the stairwell at Comerica Bank (across the street from my office). It's more private but not totally secluded so it's not scary.
He just wants to talk to me about my hair first. He pulls it back in a ponytail and we're just talking about it. He asked if I'd seen Interview with a Vampire because he did hair for that. I say "OF COURSE!" and then realize that that's a strange response so I explain that I'm a vampire freak...and "who did the make-up for that film...it sucked!" He tells me her name--it's right, i looked it up.
Well, next thing I know i tell him he can cut my hair!! He just took the ponytail and cut it off, trimmed a couple other pieces and that was about it!
I went back to work with a foot of my hair missing and FREAKING OUT!!! I had practically the entire company upstairs looking at my hair...I was the talk of the Christmas party! I was that girl who had her hair cut in a stairwell!