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The French connection: Hairstylist brings international training to Shadyside salon
Sunday, February 13, 2000 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
While most of her high school classmates were still looking for jobs, Marty Hall Goldstein was already running her own beauty salon in Somerset County.
"My mother helped me with the finances. I didn't even count money at night," Goldstein said.
Now, at age 47, Goldstein's career as a hairstylist has taken her from the small town of Confluence to New York, London and Paris to perfect her techniques.
Goldstein owns the Jacques Dessange Institut de Beaute in Shadyside, one of just five franchises in the United States of the celebrated European and Asian chain that offers treatments and products for hair, skin and body.
Jacques Dessange, whose name is on more than 600 salons worldwide, is also the official stylist for the Cannes Film Festival, the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the French Open.
Goldstein, who has been there since the salon at 802 S. Aiken Ave. opened on April 28, 1998, counts among her clients society doyennes such as Ritchie Battle Scaife, as well as Pete Flaherty, Pittsburgh's former mayor.
Other regular visitors to the elegant, light-filled salon include businessmen, housewives and CMU and Pitt students.
Personable and enthusiastic, Goldstein discovered her talent when, as a young girl, she realized that she never tired of styling her mother's hair.
"She loved when I brushed and combed her hair," Goldstein said.
So, during the three summers of her high school years, Goldstein attended beauty school classes at Mason Frederick Beauty School in Uniontown while staying with a close friend of her family.
By the time she graduated from Turkeyfoot High School in 1970, Goldstein had earned a beauty school degree in addition to her regular diploma.
During the four years she worked in Confluence, Goldstein started her day at 7:30 a.m. and finished at 10:30 p.m. The experience taught her the value of a work ethic, how to run a salon and please customers.
Before taking over the salon in Confluence, Goldstein recalls, she rode past it in the car with her father and noticed that the owner, who soon retired, was still working at 7:30 on a Thursday night.
"I would never do that," Goldstein recalls telling her father.
Now, she says, "My Dad and I still laugh about that."
By 1976, Goldstein had acquired enough confidence to come to Pittsburgh, where she hoped to learn even more.
While managing two salons for Stephen Szabo, owner of Stephen's Hairgraphics in South Hills Village and at 3101 Washington Road, McMurray, Goldstein realized that she would have to sell her salon in Confluence.
"I had been exposed to something greater, and I wanted more," she said.
Annual trips to New York for hair-styling seminars and a weeklong visit to the technically oriented Vidal Sassoon Academy in London inspired Goldstein.
"I'd come back, and I'd be so motivated. It was extremely satisfying to make people look great and feel happy," she said.
In London, Goldstein learned much more about the structure of hair and, "how to understand where you cut something, where it's falling. Vidal's approach was clean and asymmetrical."
When she married in 1980, Goldstein put her career on hold and had two children in four years. Although she still attended seminars in New York and Paris, most of her time was consumed by family life, raising money for Sewickley Academy and helping her husband, Bob Goldstein, owner of International Diamond Importers, sell diamonds.
Now that her children, Elise and Wes, are teen-agers, Goldstein spends a good deal of time improving her salon, which offers a full range of spa services as well as manicures, pedicures and a complete line of makeup.
During her career, Goldstein has seen a wide range of fashion in hair.
When Farrah Fawcett's layered look became popular in the 1970s, Goldstein replicated it for customers and often had them kneel over the back of a chair while she did it.
To achieve the architectural but soft, feminine look popularized by Jacques Dessange, Goldstein asks her clients to stand for a few minutes during their session.
While Sassoon perfected an asymmetrical technique, the French stylists, such as Dessange, took the rules of that technique and broke them.
In France, stylists such as Dessange softened the lines of hairstyles, making women look more feminine and natural.
Dessange, who opened his first salon in 1956 in Paris, got his start by styling the hair of lightweight models who wore the fashions of such heavyweight designers as Chanel, Christian Dior and Yves St. Laurent. He went on to style the hair of such actresses as Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda.
With 680 salons in Europe and Asia, Jacques Dessange is the largest upscale franchise in the world. Five U.S. salons, located in New York, Miami, Washington, D.C., Pittsburgh and Nashville, are just the beginning of a U.S. expansion.
Goldstein began to learn the French approach by observing stylists who appeared at the Haute Coiffure Festival, an annual event held in September in Paris.
In 1996, Goldstein met Dessange and his son, Benjamin, who manages the daily affairs of the business.
Goldstein attended Dessange schools in New York and Paris, where she learned the architectural approach to cutting hair that is designed to create a fuller, softer and more natural hairstyle.
Trips to Paris are a welcome change from the long days Goldstein puts in at her salon. On a typical morning, she downs about 10 different vitamins before starting another 14-hour day.
"I take everything just in case I need it," she said.
That statement could also summarize Goldstein's desire to constantly learn about new hairstyling trends and techniques.
Goldstein plans to learn how to do hair extensions, a technique that uses keratin, the protein in hair, to permanently meld more natural hair to a person's hair.
Extensions, which gave Gwyneth Paltrow the long, gold tresses she wore in "Shakespeare in Love," are not just for movie stars. Goldstein said that people suffering hair loss, such as cancer survivors, could benefit from extensions.
In Pittsburgh, hairstyles tend to be somewhat regional, Goldstein observed: Big hair, held in place by lots of hair spray, is still seen in the South Hills. In Sewickley, women tend to wear more angular styles with plain lines. But in Shadyside, Goldstein said, "the look is more French."
Although she has been styling hair for more than 20 years, Goldstein's continuing enthusiasm for her work is palpable.
"I love people who bring pictures in. Everyone has an image of themselves," she said.
Deborah Daquila, who began working for Goldstein in August of 1998, had already trained at Jacques Dessange schools for 31/2 years.
As a "designer" in the Dessange model, Daquila only cuts hair and another staff member specializes in coloring. The technique, Daquila said, creates "architecturally correct cuts that we dishevel. It's hair that moves."
Daquila loves working for Goldstein, who sent her to style hair at the U.S. Open tennis tournament last year. Next month, Daquila will travel to Paris again.
"She's a people grower and she's very fair," Daquila said. "She pushes you to do better."
There is a wide range of prices for the many services available at the Shadyside salon, including $45-$95 for a woman's cut and design and $30 or more for a man's, and $50-175 for coloring. A sampling of other services, apart from the standards such as manicure, pedicure, facials and waxing, includes: French clay scalp massage ($40-$60) and an aromatherapy Swedish massage ($75).
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