SNIP ARENA: Mumbai's Juice salon has no gender bias on the shop floor

"Makeovers, like any other art form, should be done in the open." Jawed habib, Hairstylist

Maybe Sylvie, the hairstylist and Delhi's unabashed drag queen, had a (well-manicured) hand in it. "I was the first to start the concept in India," drawls Sylvie. It's not hard to believe. The "concept" is the two-in-one, unisex salon in urban pockets. Call it the bi-gender beauty parlour of the generation-next narcissus, where the line between Men's and Ladies Only sections is disappearing faster than the pencil-thin eyebrow. The point: if you can have unisex hairstyles, why not unisex salons? Across India, be it the Juice salon in Mumbai run by Adhuna Bhabani-Akhtar (known for her makeovers in Dil Chahta Hai), Jacques Dessange in Delhi or the GRT Senorita salon in conservative Chennai, two-sex salons are the norm.

"For an un-integrated country like India, parlours today are not gender specific," says Bhabani-Akhtar of Juice, which has been unisex "from the word go", in line with international trends. "There's no man-woman discrimination on the shop floor." Men work on women, women work on men, and as a bonus you could have Anil Kumble or a Preity Zinta sitting under a dryer right next to you. What was earlier a five-star concept is now in private parlours too.

In Delhi, several such beauty shops have sprung up in the past six months. Take Victoria, the three-month-old unisex salon in Greater Kailash-II, an undeclared beauty zone with as many as seven parlours on one road. The salon is a square hall with walls in bold blue, orange and yellow-much like a Rubik's cube-to appeal to both sexes. "There is a deliberate brightness and openness about the place," says salon Managing Director Manoj Khurana. "It's in keeping with our unisex USP." The hair, pedicure and manicure sections are unisex-you get your foot massage with the man/woman in the next chair-but the body massage parlours are not. Not yet. "That's because getting a female assistant to massage a male client could get tacky. We are not ready for that yet," admits Khurana.

HAIR MATES: For Ambat (sitting) and his wife (left), getting makeovers together is fun

Back in the haircutting section, gents' hairstylist Harsha Sharma is snipping the bristly ends of a customer's hair. She pulls up a chair to be on eye and ear level and expertly goes about her mane task. Between snips and hair sprays, she also chats up Charanjit S. Sahni, a Gurgaon-based exporter and loyal client. They animatedly discuss the weather, grooming, and salons in Mumbai.

"It's important to strike a rapport with your client, male or female," says Sharma. "This is another realm for them and they want to open up. It's an equal world here." A world where the girls don't mind the boys peering at them on a bad hair day, during their most private-and often unkempt-moments when their defences are down and so is discretion. Says Bishow Shanti of Harry and Shanti's in Delhi's crowded South Extension market: "Customers no longer feel odd that members of the opposite sex are looking at them while they get a lengthy oil massage or a facial."

As Sharma explains, the analogy is derived from the greenrooms of the fashion world, where male and female models dress, change and preen a million times in the same room "dropping all pretences". The dress rehearsals actually start in the fashion world. Nina Gulati of the Perfect 10 salon, which opened in Delhi in April this year and has male-female fertility symbols for a logo, says the changed mindset is thanks to men. "A few years ago, women would have felt uncomfortable going to a centre where they would have had to share the same premises with the men. Not any longer." Celebrity hairstylist Jawed Habib agrees: "The cabin system is very archaic. Makeovers are like any art form and should be done in the open."

For parlours, the real reason for the sex shift is cost. It makes sound business sense to have one floor instead of two, three dryers instead of six, five hands instead of 10. "It cuts down costs by 40 per cent," says Delhi hairstylist Samantha Kochchar. Adds Sylvie: "This way, the services of a parlour are fully utilised. There's so much more family in such an arrangement."

BEAUTY BONDS: A rapport with clients is important for Victoria salon's hairstylist Sharma

"The establishment and equipment costs dip," agrees Chennai beautician Loretta Maria Andrews, who is opening a new salon in Chennai's Hotel Radisson shortly. It will be "an open one" with posters of male and female icons for "the unisex effect". The city is game, says Andrews, even though there's "the odd conservative maami who balks at the thought of another man glimpsing at her underarms and legs". For them, Andrews will have another room. But by and large, she says, "Going to a unisex parlour is the best outing for a husband and wife duo over a lazy weekend."

Take 30-year-old Chennai-based graphic artist Arun S. Ambat and his wife Rose who are regulars at Pivot Point. "We get haircuts and treatments together and are able to give each other pointers on the way we look. It's good fun doing it together and you don't feel queasy because the environment promotes interaction," says Ambat. Adds Neha Dixit, Jacques Dessange's marketing head: "Even if the husband has to babysit, he needn't wait outside while his wife is getting a facial. The unisex salon is a family salon."

Not everyone is happy though. There are many women for whom the beauty parlour was their own private preserve where they could gossip and let their hair down. In that rarefied all-girl atmosphere, a male customer seated in the next chair would be sacrilege. Like unisex hairstyles, however, salons for men and women are an idea whose time has come, and the fact is that it's men who are more hesitant to enter what was a female domain. Says Kochchar: "Men have come out of the closet." Or, in this case, the cabins.