Do artists make good hairdressers? The New York art scene tried to find out

Francisco Correa Cordero, the founder of Lubov in New York, barely has time to get a haircut. “An artist friend of mine, Timmy Simonds, came into the gallery once and said I need a haircut,” he says. “He and my assistant, Maria, kept saying that maybe someone should cut my hair here in the gallery.” Last weekend, this spark of an idea turned into a reality with an event called “Coda”, where the space was turned into a salon where 86 New Yorkers got an artistic chop – while over 500 people watched. The 70 artists, gallerists, designers and musicians cut hair in one-hour slots for 48 consecutive hours. Cordero was there the whole time, from Friday, March 14, until Sunday, March 16, at 6pm. “I actually had a mattress in my office, but I think I only slept four hours total,” he says. 

Cordero says the idea of turning the gallery into a hair salon spiralled out of control after his initial conversation with Timmy and Maria. First, they brainstormed it being just a day but decided to make it a whole weekend. Then, they landed on one-hour shifts for 48 hours, and Cordero knew they needed a large number of stylists. When asked how he convinced the artists to try their hand at hairdressing, he simply shrugs. “I just texted people I knew, that’s it,” he says. “Out of the 90 people that I asked, 85 said yes.” As it turns out, the likes of Chloe Wise, Martine Ali, Amanda Ba and Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen were all game to cut hair. “I had people say they used to cut their friends’ hair in college, and others say their grandfather was a barber, so they really wanted this opportunity,” he says. 

Part of the difficulty of running an all-night makeshift salon is getting foot traffic in the early hours of the morning – but, at Lubov, there were still people showing up at 5am. This included a group of 10 people who stopped in on Saturday at 6am after bar hopping and a group of three who came at 5am on Sunday. “The haircuts were pay-as-you-wish, but they [the second group] brought us a bottle of homemade wine,” says Cordero. “It was really sweet; we opened that bottle while they were getting a haircut.” Meanwhile, the artist Jamian Juliano-Villani dyed hair and created spider web designs, and Amanda Ba created designs with a razor. One guest with ultra-long hair even asked for it to be cut to half the length. 

Cordero didn’t get a haircut during Coda, but it seems artists across all mediums are curious about hairdressing. The real question then becomes: were the cuts any good? Cordero says it varied. “I have to admit that they were not professional haircuts, so you could tell they weren’t perfect,” he says. “But everybody was enjoying themselves.” And, perhaps, that was the point – people wanted something different from their routine chop. “I think people were interested in spending one-on-one time with an artist they admire or someone they wouldn’t meet in a normal context,” says Cordero. “I think maybe that was the adventure.” By the end of our conversation, I’d agreed to give haircutting a go at Lubov’s next event (although that won’t be for a while because Cordero is severely sleep-deprived).