When Ashley Chanter Rizzo, 36, goes to the salon, she wants stylists to cut the chitchat.
“Silence is rare,” the Ridgefield, Conn., mother of four tells The Post. When it comes to the person who’s cutting her hair, “I don’t care how cute her dog is or if she can’t wait for her vacation to Florida with her boyfriend,” Rizzo says. “I only care if she’s going to do a good job. What if talking distracts her and she messes up my haircut?”
She sounds like the perfect candidate for the Silent Haircut, a buzzy new service offered at Not Another Salon in London. When booking appointments, customers can opt into a quiet trim at no extra charge. It made waves online late last month, when salon owner Sophia Hilton — host of the BBC makeover show “Misfits Salon” — posted about the silent snip option on Instagram.
“Why is it we feel embarrassed to say we need some quiet time? Why do we feel we need to bury our heads in a book and hope they get the hint?” she writes in the post, which received more than 8,000 likes. “While so many of us love [chatting] at the hairdresser’s, others just need some time out, and that should be OK to ask for.”
On this side of the pond, stylists and clients are divided about the service.
“It’s ridiculous and pretentious,” says Chris Naselli, a celebrity stylist and owner of Naselli & Co. in the East Village. “It’s pretty obvious if your client doesn’t want to be chatty. They don’t have to ask. Just don’t talk.”
Kathleen Arvelo, a haircutter at Oon Arvelo Salon in Midtown, is more open to it. She doesn’t offer a silent cut per se, but she does ask clients, especially new ones, if they would like to chill out in peace while she works.
“If someone is anxious or nervous, maybe they want to be left to their own thoughts,” says Arvelo.
One of her clients, Maury Rogoff, a New York publicist, often takes her up on the request.
“A silent service is good for the supercharged, overstimulated person,” she says.
Suzie Fromer, 47, from Irvington, NY, thinks it’s the height of rudeness to request a quiet cut — although she can see the benefits of a babble-free blowout.
“I imagine some people would be thrilled to have a clear-cut ‘no talking’ situation,” says the jewelry designer. “But to pay someone so you can pretend they’re not there while they perform a, frankly, somewhat intimate service for you seems wrong . . . Some chatting and exchanging social niceties is a normal part of the [client-stylist] relationship.”
Plus, in these digitally exhausting times, there’s value to these small human interactions.
“Social media and technology have ruined the art of talk,” says Naselli. “How boring for everyone if the whole place is quiet. I would pull my hair out.”
Rizzo, who feels the opposite, has come up with a creative workaround.
“I recently cut my hair so short I can hit a barbershop and be in and out in 20 minutes,” she says. “That leaves plenty of time to go have a great cup of coffee in silence.”