A Haughty Year

Depending on which foreign film actress was in vogue, U.S. women over the past few years have tangled their hair until it swelled out to blimp proportions or plastered it down on their skulls as if it were Saran Wrap. Now hair is headed in the only remaining direction: up, up, up. Last week Saks Fifth Avenue Hair Stylist Adrian, the personally trained protege of Saks's famed Antoine, offered the U.S. the look that topped this summer's Paris collections--swirling, soaring swatches of hair that take off into the sky like the aftermath of atomic attack. Unlike wigs, which cover the whole head, the new hair pieces do not hide the original hair but are attached to it with pins and go on from there.

"Practical and elegant," says Adrian. "That's what the new look's about. You're having lunch in town and you've got this gala to go to at night, so you put the hair piece in a bag and take it with you, and with four hairpins you've got your elegance." Upkeep is nominal; an occasional dusting or a once-over with the vacuum keeps the topknot topnotch. And many of Adrian's wiglets, unlike the French designs, go up and out in living color. Although "Les Plumes" fans out to three all-brunette coils, "Celestial Arc" works its spectral way from pale lavender on the top to ash blond at the lower level. "Flamingo" starts out peach-pink and ends up a deep gold. "It's what nature does," says Adrian. "Your trees, your flowers, your limbs, your leaves--everything's all light at the top and real dark at the bottom."

Nature is rarely so expensive; Adrian's new hair pieces cost anywhere from $75 for a readymade, solid-color version to the custom-made, many-splendored thing at $500. Adrian (real name: Rene A. Caricari), who claims to have invented the side wave, the wing wave, the beehive and the Psyche look, will put his hair pieces on view next week for the first time (atop mannequins in Saks's Manhattan windows). He steadily insists that they are more than a passing fancy. "The look for this fall, and next year too, is pure elegance," he says. "No more will the afternoon look do for the nighttime. Mark my words, we've got a slightly haughty year ahead."

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