Hair salons offer a nick of nostalgia and a lot of pampering

The scent of hair spray hangs heavy in the air as Doug Fitzsimmons settles in a barber chair holding a remote control in one hand and a cold beverage in the other. He is getting the "deluxe" haircut at Major League Trim, a year-and-a-half old salon in trendy West Los Angeles.

The attention is, indeed, deluxe. Every chair has its own cable TV. For the next 40 minutes, Mr. Fitzsimmons will surf through more than 100 channels. He will receive a hearty scalp massage infused with tea tree oil, while enjoying a drink in an environment that resembles a sports arena. The cost: $40.

"This is my guy place," says Fitzsimmons, an advertising executive. "I used to get my haircut at my wife's salon, and it felt kind of emasculating. But I always remembered going to the barbershop with my dad, and it was a guy place geared toward helping you relax."

Welcome to the new world of haircuts. For years, the trend was toward unisex salons, places where men and women trouped to get a cleave or weave. Some were chichi, others catered to the Head and Shoulders set.

Now, however, there's a shift back to salons and shops aimed specifically at men or women, evoking the 1950s when bouffant hairdos and straight razor shaves were strictly the domain of beauty parlors and barbershops. Yet today's single-sex salons also often offer amenities – flat-screen TVs, steamed towels, massages, bottled water – that make them feel as much like a country club or spa as a place to get a trim.

"We're seeing ... more barbershops and hair salons that are making men feel like men and women feel like women," says Alfred Osbourne, an associate dean at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Hair salons are more than just a place to get your haircut. It's about the experience."

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Nowhere is the new coiffure culture more pronounced than in southern California, the nation's unofficial capital of pate grooming, where every kind of trendy do, gel, and scissor-snipping technique can be found.

Take Major League Trim in Los Angeles, for instance. When Rob Reed opened the salon, he wanted it to be exclusively for men. "You won't find Oprah on the TV here," says Mr. Reed, standing beside a coffee table with stacks of magazines, including ESPN, Spin, Sports Illustrated, and Men's Health. "This is the new hip. We are customizing the experience for our male customers."

In other cases, shops are still catering to both men and women – but in consciously distinct ways. At Salon Pop & Barber Shop in Long Beach, pink pastels and hair curlers surround one station, while transparent blue Barbicide jars flank Pinaud Clubman talc at another one.

Before the store opened in January, Nicole Welke, co-owner and manicurist, says she and her partners were tired of the fast food, hair-flinging feel of the major salon chains that began proliferating in the 1980s.

"We wanted a salon that helped our clients express their own personalities," says Ms. Welke, who cuts cuticles and paints nails from the pedestal of a wooden throne awash in gold. "We didn't want a clinical environment, nor a place that made customers feel like they had to be rich to get their haircut here."

But it's not only haircuts that Salon Pop offers. Its services include straight razor shaves and hot lather, makeup, body treatments, and even back facials (defined as "an effective treatment to cleanse and clear problem areas on the back and shoulders," according to the salon's website).

Professor Osbourne says many hair salons are beginning to resemble spas as a result of the sales potential of facial wash, in addition to bottles of shampoo and other products. "The consumer is being sold on the idea of total wellness," says Osbourne, noting that hair products alone account for $100 billion in sales a year.

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