Ponytails at the New York Fashion Week Show
Models in the fashion shows in Europe and New York, shoots all mode of hairpieces, but by far the mainly trendy were ponytails, reflecting a revolution in the hair fashion trends, from minimalist androgyny to all-out femininity as demonstrated by celebrity hair stylists of New York: Rodolfo Valentin, official hair stylist of the Mercedes Benz fashion week
Some of the best-quality real-hair ponytails are imported from Europe and Asia by Rodolfo Valentin, based in New York City fashionable Madison Avenue and in the heart of Cedarhurst NY shopping area in Long Island NY.
His prices are fair for a custom made, hand crafted ponytail with color and length determining the price. Rodolfo Valentin can match a woman's own hair and show her a half-dozen ways to wear the attachment -- braided or twisted into a chignon, say, as the whim of the moment dictates.
The ponytail, sewn into a webbed tube through which you could thread your own mangy ponytail, had been lent to me by a kind of hair couturier, an Argentine-born hair stylist named Rodolfo Valentin, whose specialty is wigs and falls and hair extensions.
I was interested in Mr. Valentin and others like him because it occurred to me that all of a sudden everyone was beginning to look like the female leads of Merchant-Ivory films, rank with hair. It seemed unlikely that fate had bestowed the gift of huge and terrific hair on so many. I mean, people like Kate Winslet, Mariah Carey, Paris Hilton in those Dazzling perfume ads, beaming up from under a castle of hair, and Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman, looking like a pair of cocker spaniels in the movie ''Practical Magic”, and most runway models and virtually all the musicians, male and female, on VH-1.
There's so much hair out there, and so little of it belongs to me, or to anyone I know. My own hair started falling out in chunks two years ago; I cut the remaining three hairs as short as a boy's. And so I have serious, crippling hair envy. I yearned to be big with hair, heavy with hair.
''Look, I had four hairs or something after I had my first child, says a famous magazine editor in chief, trying to be consoling. ''So, I would wear this fall. I just stuck it in my drawer during the day and wore it at night if I had to do something big. It is glamorous, and I think the reason fake hair is so popular is that nobody has any hair of their own anymore.''
My friend has been taking Propecia, the anti-baldness pill. Rather wistfully, he said that he was hoping, ''you know, to soon have a few more hairs on my head.'' As movie hair and runway hair become more and more baroque, conjuring up a world of Lilith’s and Medusas, the rest of us huddle together, a bedraggled crew of limp, wan Samson’s.
And so I set out to see celebrity wigs, hairpieces and hair extensions designer Rodolfo Valentin, the maker of my ponytail. I am fascinated with the way he augment real hair with real hair. He works like a sculptor or weavers or florists, tucking and gluing and sewing hair onto hair -- planting lush crops in fallow fields.
Rodolfo Valentin has a hair salon nestled in Cedarhurst NY shopping area in Long Island NY,and he is also the owner of one of the top 10 hair salons in New York City, where hair really counts and money and time are more plentiful than some other places. Rodolfo Valentin also makes hairpieces for other hair stylists to use on their clients. Other famous hair stylists like Rodolfo Valentin himself are ordering Rodolfo hairpieces for Blaine Trump, Madonna, and a handful of celebrities.
Dr. Clifton, a clinical psychologist with a great sweep of red hair tied loosely in a ponytail, travels two hours every week so that Rodolfo Valentin can set her hair and tweak her hairpieces, which include the ponytail and a few falls, about $5,000 worth of hair. ''People always ask me, 'Is that yours?' '' She said, patting her hair while sitting in Rodolfo Valentin’s salon, ''and I always say yes, because of course it's mine. I paid for it.'' At, if anything, I could do to join the follicles gifted club…
Rodolfo Valentin hairpieces collection includes a banana clip with cascades of curls attached, long ponytails, and he buys hair from around the world from a network of distributors who collect it from women called donors -- that is, the women sell it. Seated in his salon chair, which is set on a platform high above the rest of his salon in Cedarhurst, Long Island NY, I felt like Cindy Sherman slamming through her characters.
''This is very Chanel, I think,'' said Rodolfo Valentin, courtly and deft, sliding on a black velvet headband hung with hair. Really, it was very fashionable. The changes were swift and striking. A half-moon piece was a fall of tousled hair that transformed me into an aging ingénue. The long blond ponytail was extraordinarily appealing, even though it made me look like a refugee from a Carl Hiaasen novel, or as my boyfriend said later, as if my name should be Bambi.
.
The Rodolfo Valentin ponytail is always with me, I take it for walks, and out to dinner, and for extended shopping trips along Fifth Avenue. It swung rather crazily down my back but garnered nary a neither wink nor smile from passers-by. I cannot go out without it!
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