Pump Up the Volume

“Ara was never a hairdresser … Ara always ‘did hair,’” enthuses actress Angelica Houston in her foreword to a new book on 1960s super-stylist Ara Gallant, the man who brought acrobatics into coiffure with his oft-copied “flying hair.” Celebrated for the strikingly original work he created with Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, Gallant became the first hairstylist to be paid to wield tongs on editorial photo shoots, after being poached from the salon of Bergdorf Goodman by Vogue in the mid-60s. He later turned to photography himself—shooting a series of covers for Interview in the 70s—and he was equally gifted in the social department, his infamous dinner parties teeming with movie stars and models. Although he never realized his ultimate ambition of becoming a Hollywood director, Gallant’s enduring influence on visual culture is perceivable everywhere, from Madonna’s Ray of Light album cover to Stephen Meisel's current campaign for Lanvin. Seldom-seen images of his work, along with many of his seminal moments, are collected in Ara Gallant, out this March from Damiani.