Petra Collins, Carlotta Kohl, and More It-Girls Swear by This Stealth Hair Salon

Tucked inside an old fourth-floor walk-up on the Lower East Side is New York’s most eclectic salon, one where grade school pencil sketches from the 1930s hang on the kitchen walls alongside large-format paintings by Jeanette Hayes and Joe Andoe. Here, on Thursdays and Fridays, you’ll find Silvia Cincotta in the dining room, quietly snipping away beneath a reclaimed chandelier—secretly doling out downtown cool to the city’s artists and It girls. This is the secret spot where Hayes, along with Carlotta Kohl, goes platinum, and where Rachel Feinstein maintains her loose curls.

Sitting down in the vintage salon chair, surrounded by bottles of Santa Maria Novella spray, Cincotta tells me about moving to New York as a teen with her childhood friend, photographer Ryan McGinley, and falling into a coveted job at Hotel Chelsea’s Suite 303 salon—then eventually giving it all up to open a laid-back practice that’s word-of-mouth only. “I don’t really use a lot of tools,” she says, demonstrating how she gently picks strands and shears them with an easy, freehand style. “I’m kind of a minimalist.”

It was three years ago when artist Petra Collins crashed at Cincotta’s place and swept her into a circle of downtown creatives. “She introduced me to an unbelievable group who has become my crew,” Cincotta says, pointing to paintings by Michael Bailey-Gates and Harmony Korine, which were playfully bartered for haircuts. “Maybe that art collection will be part of my retirement,” she says, laughing. Since then, Cincotta—who once roomed with FKA twigs—has gone on to cut Tilda Swinton’s hair for Doug Aitken’s Sleepwalkers at the Museum of Modern Art, and brought her personal touch to models like Ashley Smith and Heather Kemesky.

“In a hair salon, you’re shuffled down the line and it feels so corporate,” Cincotta goes on. “Here, people are my friends. They’re coming to my house; they’re getting me and my undivided attention.” Of course, that does make an appointment all the harder to book—which might make a Cincotta haircut the ultimate art-world accessory.

 

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