To passers-by, Crops for Girls, a salon on East Ninth Street, resembles any of the dozens of chic beauty parlors in the neighborhood. The paint is rosy and bright, the mirrors are gilded and portraits of starlets dot the walls. But look closer and a subtle theme emerges. Each of those women - Audrey Hepburn, Louise Brooks, Jean Seberg - has short hair.
Since 1992, Michael D'Amico has made a business out of chopping off women's hair, dealing exclusively in above-the-shoulder styles. Bobs, pageboys, asymmetrical razor cuts - they are his specialty. If the salon had a motto, it might be 'No men, no ponytails, no exceptions.'
Mr. D'Amico, 50, was a beauty school student in Manhattan in the 1980s. Women on the streets - this was the heyday of new wave and punk - didn't look like the girls back in Jersey City, where he grew up. 'I would see girls walking around with buzz cuts and other cropped, funky hair,' he recalled. Hoping to avoid a career giving ho-hum trims, he decided to narrow his focus. 'There are only so many styles you can do with long hair, and I like the challenge of working with people who are making a big change,' he said.
Take Maria Pinero, 38, who found Crops for Girls while searching online for 'best shops for short cuts' in New York City. For ages, Ms. Pinero had been wearing her hair anywhere from the middle of her back to her waist; she was ready, if a little anxious, for something different.
Her daughter, Kaelah Almonte, 11, who accompanied her from Staten Island for the cut, was more cheerful. 'Look, Mom,' she said, 'the walls are pink, and you are getting your hair cut like Pink!' Ms. Pinero had brought a photo of the short-haired pop singer as inspiration.
Mr. D'Amico estimated that he had given thousands of drastic cuts over the past two decades and said he never got nervous. 'I have done it so many times now, it is natural,' he said. Still, Ms. Pinero watched closely while he snipped and buzzed. 'While he was working, I heard the razor going behind my head and thought, 'What is this, the Army?' ' she said. By session's end, her ultrashort pixie gleamed, and she was all smiles.
All cuts at Crops for Girls are given by Mr. D'Amico, whose particular taste in hair is matched by other eccentricities - like a tendency to put a record on repeat for weeks at a time (you might hear the Grateful Dead or Peggy Lee), a fascination with nature shows, which he shows in the store, and a blunt conversational style.
'He can be a little sassy,' said Rebecca Robles, 27, a model, actress and makeup artist from Astoria, Queens. 'He is completely not going to do small talk with you.' Clients do not seem to mind. They pass along word of the salon's existence as if handing over a map to an underground pixie mecca.
Before Ms. Robles found Crops for Girls, stylists occasionally made her hair look too masculine, or gave inconsistent cuts, she said. Then a short-haired woman approached her on the street and asked, 'Do you go see that guy?' She learned that Mr. D'Amico was 'that guy,' and ever since has been traveling an hour on the subway nearly every month for an appointment.
'I get compliments every time I go,' she said. 'Before I found Michael, I had started to wonder if a pixie was just the wrong cut for me and was considering growing it out. Now I know I am never going to have long hair again.'
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