UPON MEETING THE AREA’S most expensive hairstylist, one learns immediately there’s lingo to be learned. Jie Matar, who charges $400 for an initial cut, is not going to simply cut and style my hair. He’s going to “Jie me.” When he’s done, I’ll not only have a new look, but I’ll be “Jie-afied.”
To be brutally honest, I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Jie. When I found him, working out of a discreet hair salon called 186 Davenport, and called to ask how much a haircut with Jie is, I was told by someone, somewhat shadily, “We don’t give that information out.
You have to come in a see Jie first.” When I first speak to Jie and mention photos, he wants to know who the photographer is, how it would be “styled” and, I think, he mentioned his “agent.” The whole $400-for-a-haircut thing, coupled with a paranoid and egotistical hairdresser with an agent? Too much for me.
Surprisingly, I end up adoring him. Jie, who is half-Lebanese and half-French, went to boarding schools in Turkey, France, and Egypt, which his family fled from in 1977, following a civil war. He ended up studying at a Paris hairdressing school in 1985, before moving to Toronto.
What happened after he moved here could easily be turned into a movie of the week.
In 2002, with a client base of 10,000 names, he opened Salon Jie, on Avenue Road, with a splash. Forty hairdressers worked at his salon, and there was easily a threeweek waiting list for a consultation with Jie in his “private cutting theatre.”
At Salon Jie, he kept his scissors in a $12,000 Louis Vuitton case, had celebrity clientele and also made many enemies. In the world of hairdressers, excuse the pun, it’s cutthroat.
“The difference between me and Jie is that my clients are more famous than me. Jie is more famous than his clients,” Robert Gage, another famous Toronto hairdresser, once said in an interview. (For the record, when I call to ask about Gage’s prices these days, they were a bargain at $130.)
Then financial troubles hit Jie. Owing hundreds of thousands of dollars — to contractors and the taxman — he was forced to close Salon Jie.
“It’s hard to be the best,” he sighs.
Though he lives in Yorkville, two blocks away from where he works, he never walks to and from. “I can’t walk because too many people will stop me to talk,” he says.
This is the same reason he hasn’t shopped in Whole Foods for two years.
“I still wish people would leave me alone, asking about it,” he says. He realized who his true friends were though. Most, surprisingly, were his clients.
Under all the bravado — which grows on you, seriously, it makes me crack up — he has a heart of gold. One of his clients tells me that her sick mother can’t leave her apartment and that Jie goes to see her. “And he makes her laugh,” she says.
He makes me laugh, too. “Of course you must love your hairdresser! It’s like your second husband,” he exclaims. Or, “You can’t come in here depressed. You have to be happy. I don’t have time for angry hair.”
When he looks at my hair he announces he’s going to make me look less Greek (I’m not Greek at all, and I like the Greek look!) and less “Alanis Morrisette circa 1990.” (Which I understand.)
I’ve grown my hair for almost a decade, and I moan I’m not ready. Basically, Jie doesn’t listen, which worries me but also, weirdly, reassures me. (You want your doctor to be certain, and I want my hairdresser to be certain.) He also tells me he’s going to lighten my hair to make me look more “Sarah Jessica Parker.”
I sit in the seat that was previously occupied by such celebs as Paris Hilton, Tori Spelling, Kim Catrall and Nelly Furtado. (Jie’s the one responsible for Furtado’s heavy bangs a few seasons ago.)
Jie tells me to lean forward, grabs my hair in a ponytail and snips it off as I feel my heart sink.
“Don’t worry,” he’s the best, a statuesque young woman says to me, after listening in on my worries.
(Every time Jie says he’s the best, a client also seems to say it.) Jie, too, works fast. For me, getting a haircut is somewhat of a chore, and Jie’s clientele are busy.
“I can get you in and out of here under an hour,” he says.
Twenty minutes later, I see what he’s done with my hair. I’m Jieafied! And loving it.
Though the salon is far from bustling, Jie still sees 15 to 22 clients a day. The salon is definitely private and quaint.
Does Jie worry that charging $400 a cut in these economic times is too much?
“No, during a recession, women are more concerned about how they look because their husbands are spending more time at the office, so they want to look good for them.” The storm has clearly passed — maybe there should be a second movie of the week called How Jie Got His Groove Back.
And, just for the record, Jie wants people to know, “I never said I was the god of hair. Someone wrote that in a headline, and that’s what people think I said.” It’s OK, Jie. I’ll say you are.