Stepping into the Rossano Ferretti salon high above Madison Avenue and 57th in the historic Fuller Building in New York City is like stepping into the living room of a dear friend who has excellent taste in interior décor.
The coloring room at the Rossano Ferretti Salon on 57th and Madison in New York City
The space is filled with Murano glass chandeliers, velvet drapery, plush leather chairs, bright green palm fronds and a complete absence of photographs of models with perfect hair – as is so usually found in high end salons. Instead, Ferretti has two photographs hanging in each of his 19 salons around the world – one of his grandfather and one of his mother. They are cutting hair and in sepia, they embody the spirit of what Rossano Ferretti is about.
The Salon
When you walk in the door of a Ferretti salon, you are family, a dear friend, a celebrity whether you think so or not. To Ferretti , every woman is a celebrity, every woman is the most beautiful woman in the world. If you don’t agree with that, you will once you walk back out the doors of the salon.
Kirsten Alana: Before
Kirsten Alana: Before
Rossano has always lived for this profession of cutting hair and beautifying women. He says he was “influenced by music, architecture, and painting, but it was what I loved to do, interpreting the trends of my era in my own way.” A Ferretti salon is not where you go to get your hair cut in the latest style. Don’t bring in a magazine and ask to have a cut copied from the glossy pages — it is not about trends. Instead he says, “We don’t just cut hair, we design it, respecting people, culture and beauty, bringing this together in harmony.” says Lorenza Ferretti, Rossanno’s sister who is the artistic director at the Ferretti school in Parma, Italy where stylists who want to work for Ferretti are trained.
Kirsten Alana: After
Rossano echoes this from the first moment he touches my hair – I couldn’t help but feel he was making love to my hair. The experience was further heightened by the absence of normal salon sounds, I couldn’t pick out the noise of a single hairdryer though I’m sure one was running somewhere behind a velvet curtain. The strains of Besame Mucho flowed through the room and I was almost put to sleep by the motion of Rossano and his specially patented scissors. As he cuts, he moves and the scissors take only twenty percent of my hair, he watches the way my hair already wants to fall and works with that. I was greeted with coffee and La Maison chocolat which I can still taste on my tongue.
I want to ask about trends as I’m interviewing Rossano but I already know what he will say, “Your natural beauty is the trend.” It’s quite possibly another cliché, yet he means it and I know that because every action he and his staff take during my hours high above bustling Madison Avenue reinforce this. This is not an assembly line salon, every step is taken with purpose and attention to detail.
When I exit the glass doors, step into the Art Deco hallway and finally descend back into the bustle that is a New York City afternoon – it’s true. I am now a beautiful woman and my hair could be in the page of a fashion magazine. How do I know that? Three people stop me on the street to ask who my stylist is. I happily tell them, “The Rossano Ferretti at Madison and 57th.”
Ferretti uses fine products from Shu Uemura and L’Oreal’s Inoa hair color.
For more information on Ferretti and his salons, visit his site.
595 Madison Ave & 57th Street, 6th Floor, Fuller Building, New York, NY 10022. (212) 759-9300.
– Kirsten Alana
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