DID YOU EVER WONDER WHY ALL HAIRDRESSERS WEAR BLACK?

The minute you enter the chicly darkened lobby of New York's Paramount Hotel, you can pick up their high-beam fashion signals. Highly textured 'dos and hair color right-out-of-the-chair. Shoes just off the boat from Italy. And fashions that cover as broad a color range as... licorice to raven. It's enough to make Andy Rooney ask, "Did you ever wonder why all hairdressers wear black?"

Sweeping statements aren't my thing, but I have to admit, the Paramount speed-sighting wasn't the first time I'd noticed that what was once the color of mourning is now hopelessly hip—and salon-specific. Any trip to a high-end trade show underscores how black is to the fashion moment what blue jeans were to the '60s.

But if clothes are really costumes, why are creative hairdressers wearing what amounts to Dracula dress? Does black make your hair style stand out more? Is it simply practical in the color department to avoid brights? Donning black to avoid a Jackson Pollock-painting look after a hard day of tinting heads seems a bit of a reach. After all, fashion editors favor black too, and they wouldn't know peroxide from a color concentrate. Sensibly, I ask a few hairdressers first.

FASHION SENSE AND SENSIBILITY

"It's not that we always wear black, and when you go outside of New York, LA and Miami, it's not such a big thing," insists Edward Tricomi, the always-fashionable co-owner of NYC's Warren-Tricomi salon. "The key is that black is noncommittal. People in the fashion industry dress down to be funky, not up. For young people who are uncertain about how to dress, it's a no-brainer."

In Chicago, Robert LaMorte, who owns three Robert Jeffrey locations—two in the city and one in nearby Homewood, Illinois—says black dominates his city salons, not the suburban one. He cites practicality, but not because black hides color splashes.

"Decades ago, stylists wore white uniforms—it was an extension of the beauty-school thing," says LaMorte. "Now black separates us from our clients without the rigidity of literal uniforms. Many salons have no specific dress code so there's a huge variable in individual interpretations of professional dress. Black makes it easy."

LaMorte, who clearly cringes at the thought of what he'd see some stylists wearing if black wasn't the guiding light, says industry-event dressing depends on the level of education. At Aveda events, black is near de rigueur while small association meetings still take the flowered-dress route, he says. Wichita's Eric Fisher, who travels the country educating for Aquage, says from Denver to D.C. he's always faced with a black sea, and he digs it—it's powerful. "But at Aquage, we're over it and wear blue," he hastens to add.

Charles Penzone, owner of two Grand Salons and the trendier Max the Salon in Columbus, Ohio, gets a kick out of the fact the Grand Salons' staffers balk at being required to wear black, citing "everyone wears it" as a negative, yet 50 percent fall back on black on any given day. "The staff at Max adopted black of their own volition; I adopted it last year because I'm trying to look like my idol, Leland Hirsch," quips Penzone.

But this still begs the question, why black both in and outside the salon? And when did the black attack on the fashion world begin?

WHEN HISTORY REPEATS

"We do various word association studies and the closest we can pinpoint the groundswell of change in attitudes toward black is the mid-'80s," says Leatrice Eise-man, director of the Pantone Color Institute. "It always had elegance as a fait accompli, but pre-'80s, there was a strong negative response to the color." (Just one association: black was worn by witches and vampires. But then again, Dracula wore black because he was usually garbed in formal attire.)

A color consultant who has written four books and sits on two prestigious color industry boards, Eiseman has a broad view of what brought black out of the closet for more than funerals. Among the influences

she cites are the momentum built during the "Black-is-Beautiful" 70s; the emphasis during the Reagan era on black as "elegant;" fashion drawing on the street for influence and coming up with black leather and tough chic; and the advent of technology that brought us hundreds of gadgets in black, which had a cutting-edge feeling. By the '80s, these many layers laid a yellow-free brick road straight to black.

"Power is an inherent response to black. Now, when we query people about how black makes them feel, they have moved from saying 'powerful' to saying 'it empowers me,'" adds Eiseman. "In big cities, it's like a protective shield to wear black."

So wearing black is avoiding commitment, dressing down is to be hip and donning a Superman cape is for the mean streets? I always thought it was to look slimmer, something only Eiseman admits is truly powerful: "Never underestimate the importance of that!"

Since all fashion trends are cyclical, history should pinpoint the true message behind black, says long-time fashion industry insider Andree Conrad.

"My take on it is very simple; it is the time-honored way of avoiding conspicuous consumption, and fashion reporters, male and female, favor it because they try to remain neutral in their industry while at the same time investing in good clothing," says Conrad.

An encyclopedia of fashion history, Conrad notes that black had its first heyday in the 17th century, when Cromwell and the Puritans took over, and then again during the latter part of the Victorian Era, which also was a Puritanical time. Think about the irony of that

"Because of the Puritan roots of American society, black has always been favored here among the old rich," she notes. "The idea among people with old money in America has always been to avoid conspicuous consumption, lest revolution come again and take their things away from them."

BLACK FOR THE FUTURE?

Edward Tricomi says it all comes back to the fact that black is simply a smart non-statement that works against every type of background, with every skin tone. "Fashion industry people were the first to realize everyone looks good in black," says Tricomi. And naturally, hair stylists are part of the fashion world. Who says high school-clique dressing doesn't have use later in life?

Trumpeting which group you belong to is all well and good, but so is saving money. Conrad notes the instance of a celebrity who capitalized on "black for sorrowing" as a cost-saving measure: actress Lily Langtry got by for months, even years, on a tiny wardrobe of smart black outfits, claiming she was in mourning

"Black is the commoner's way of buying investment clothing and getting a lot of miles out of it; but if you wear black in a fashion context where people are liable to be able to pick out what you are wearing from its cut, your outfit better be good—even if you bought it at Sym's," says Conrad.

Eiseman agrees, noting that black can even hide some style sins. "With black, you can buy a less expensive garment that looks good," she says. "Even though fashion pundits regularly proclaim gray is the new black or navy is the new black, there is no new black."

But is it such good news that wearing black says "I'm in with the in crowd," and that an added value, it doesn't take much money to do? Sorry, but the dollar element is precisely why those higher up on the food chain can and do take more liberties.

"You see more black in the rank-and-file; Vogue editor Anna Wintour wore white high heels at the September couture shows," breaking the old no-white-after-Labor-Day rule, notes Eiseman.

Not quite enough to get Wintour's head cut off by a style proletariat in revolt, but smart enough to place her in the brave new world of the fashion aristocracy. If she and others like her take it further, will we ever see an end to black Tuesdays... and Wednesdays... and Thursdays? Fisher says he can't foresee white nights; black could be banished in the sense of gray days, but even then, it will be just for variety.

But if you've got a notion to add a little color to your life and the desire to jump to the cutting edge of the style hierarchy, click onto www.flatlander.com. The corporate uniform provider's website has a nifty quiz that lets you enter the three most important characteristics you want associated with your salon, services and products. When you do so, you get a color-complete description of a loosely defined dress code that could extend your fashion reach.

In the meantime, enjoy the fact that black makes life simpler and keeps your budget in line. After all, good guys don't always wear white.