Features
Pump It Up: Hair Ball
By Keith N. Dusenberry
Oct 11, 2006, 23:58

orman Wagner can’t stand fashion shows. The man who now runs Roseville’s London Calling Salon and the Real Big Hair Ball started out as a hired gun doing hair and airbrushing makeup at — gasp! — fashion shows. “I hate fashion shows, I truly do,” he said. “It’s one of the things that I just hate, ‘cause they’re boring. It’s like, ‘Kill me!’”

When Wagner got hired to do an out-of-town designer’s Detroit fashion show in 1986, he made the designer an offer he couldn’t refuse. “I told the guy, ‘Hey, if you let me do a pre-fashion show, do whatever I want, I’ll do your makeup for free,’” Wagner recalled. The designer took him up on the deal. "So (for the pre-show) I had three or four models, big wacky hair, a little outrageous body makeup and then I chopped the models’ hair up with hedge clippers — on the catwalk. Everyone went crazy. Then, afterwards, the fashion show went on and it was kind of anti-climactic. And I liked doing it! I saw then, ‘Wow, people really like this craziness.’”

That pre-show grew into the show itself and the Hair Ball was born. “It’s a parody of fashion shows and hair shows — without a doubt,” Wagner said. “You’ll see some really beautiful hair and makeup — some really, really nice stuff, but then you’re also gonna see some of the wackiest stuff you’ve ever seen. So, it’s a little bit of both, but it is a parody of both. As I always say: Pure performance art.”

By the mid-‘90s, other area salons joined in the fun and the event grew into the Real Big Hair Ball. Twenty years on, the Hair Ball remains a wild night of hair, fashion, comedy and performance art. It’s been so successful that Wagner plans to take the concept “on tour” in 2007 by staging Hair Balls in cities around the U.S.

“You know what people want in Detroit — and across the country — they just want pure entertainment,” Wagner said. “When they go to the Hair Ball, what they’re gonna see is, first of all, some great hairdressers doing some phenomenal work — but it’s pure entertainment.”  | RDW

Real Big Hair Ball • October 15 • Royal Oak Music Theatre

A portion of the ticket price goes to benefit the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. More info: realbighairball.com, hairball.info or call 586.778.6379.





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