In a five-story 1883 town house on Washington, D.C.’s K Street, Andre Chreky’s salon is masterfully set up to accommodate a town divided into red and blue. Two distinct cutting-room floors keep clients with opposing politics out of one another’s sights. “I try to keep them separated because they look at each other and you can see their stiffness,” says Chreky, citing former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton and former Russian Ambassador Yuri Ushakov as two clients who have been escorted in different directions. Though there is also a private room for those with no patience for chitchat (oddly enough, John McLaughlin was a fan of those quarters), Chreky and his wife, Serena, insist that this is the sort of place where, despite being situated just two blocks from the White House, things are downright folksy—Callista Gingrich’s husband, Newt, walks her over regularly and reads a book while he waits for her to get her hair done. Recently, both White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and Senior Adviser David Axelrod personally called the salon to make appointments. “There’s no entourage [for these two],” Serena Chreky says earnestly, adding that political figures often want to minimize the hoopla surrounding routine haircuts. “You need [to go] somewhere where you’re not going to read about it in the paper the next day. You need a salon that protects you.”
That’s because, unlike the White House beauty parlor, with its single shampoo station and chair reserved for the first family, the leading salons in Washington cater to a rotating cast of senators, congresspeople, ambassadors and journalists. And each establishment dances the delicate waltz of keeping political pit bulls with jam-packed schedules happy and relaxed while beautifying them discreetly in a town that loves to abhor vanity.
At the storied George Salon at the Four Seasons, station after station of strapping Turkish men—the D.C. salon scene is dominated by Turks, who, as one competitor says, give “the best blow-dries in the world and don’t talk much”—tend to some of the most watched heads on the Hill, including Judy Woodruff, Maureen Dowd, Madeleine Albright, Elizabeth Dole and Chris Matthews. The genial gray-bearded proprietor, George Ozturk, likes to say he presides over “the safest salon in Washington,” thanks to the rows of bulletproof Secret Service–packed SUVs waiting outside for clients as well as hotel guests such as King Abdullah II of Jordan. Inside, stylists get a few requests each day for “Pelosi hair.” Luckily, Omer Cevirme, who styles the House speaker’s sleek chestnut mane five days a week, works on-site.
Traditionally, the look in D.C.—ultraconservative and often outdated by fashionable standards—has been the subject of much ridicule. When she was first lady, Hillary Clinton even mocked her own ever changing hairstyles by hanging a poster of them in the private residence (her much improved ladylike shag is now tended by Isabelle Goetz of the Cristophe Salon). Yet a political figure who takes an overt interest in his or her appearance is often called out for it—especially when the cost of the primping comes into question. Remember the commotion around John Edwards’s $400 trims and Sarah Palin’s sassy RNC-funded updos?
