The New York landmark, which is currently closed for renovation, housed the iconic Kenneth salon from 1990 until 2015 and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Brooke Astor, and Babe Paley among its devotees.Celebrity colorist Tracey Cunningham, who is most recently responsible for Lady Gaga’s turn as a brunette in A Star Is Born, and for returning Riley Keough’s lengths to their natural state of red, just announced her latest venture: a super-discreet salon located inside the new Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills. “I’ve wanted to have [my own] salon in a hotel ever since I started watching the ’80s TV show Hotel,” she says of the big-name, big-headline type of behind-the-scenes activity that only exists inside such luxury properties. Not that Cunningham, who also co-owns Los Angeles’s Mèche salon with stylist Neil Weisberg, and regularly jets between Dubai, Europe, and the Kardashian compounds in Calabasas, California, is short on entertainment. Tucked away on the hotel’s mezzanine floor, accessible via a private elevator that requires key card access, the jewel box salon has just five chairs, along with an even tinier private room for V-VIPs. Both offer styling, cutting, extensions, and, of course, coveted color consultations with Cunningham. Though the salon seems destined to act as home base to Hollywood actresses and power players, “[Still,] the whole experience is very house call-y to me,” says Cunningham of the private nature of the space—a rare thing in Los Angeles, where paparazzi are set up outside every celebrity salon and spa. Actress Maria Bello, a client, agrees: “[It] is very low key,” she says upon arrival for her inaugural coloring session. Once seated in the Art Deco–inspired interior—the hotel’s design is a nod to both old-world Hollywood glamour and the Streamline Moderne style of the 1930s—clients like Bello and Dakota Johnson can sip on a fresh juice; order a cocktail from the rooftop bar, which overlooks the hills and downtown Los Angeles; or have food sent up from the Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, the Parisian’s first outpost in Los Angeles, which is located on the ground floor. Cunningham’s involvement with the West Coast hotel, which is at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards, essentially the gateway to Beverly Hills, also marks a return for the Waldorf Astoria as a go-to spot for hair. The New York landmark, which is currently closed for renovation, housed the iconic Kenneth salon from 1990 until 2015 and counted Jacqueline Kennedy, Brooke Astor, and Babe Paley among its devotees. And while Cunningham has her sights set on opening a sister salon in the soon-to-be renovated hotel on the East Coast, until then, she says, “I think clients like to check out the newest thing—and this is definitely it.”
POST: 2024-04-26