SILENT TREATMENT

Chit-chat during a haircut can be torturous for introverts – but now an innovative business in Helsinki is cutting the conversation. Helen Coffey applauds the pioneering move

- Helen Coffey

Generally speaking, I get my hair cut but once a year. I tell people it’s because the criminal cost of a trim these days would require me to flog a kidney, but the real story is that I find the experience almost unbearable.

There’s the part where you, a non-hairdresser, have to somehow muster the words to describe what you’d like, invoking an entire secret language – “oh, I was thinking of a semi-undercut with a French shag and a double-tuck, round-off, back-handspring? Maybe with some long layers at the back?” – or else stab mutely at a picture of Zendaya, as if the stylist had the power to transform you into the world’s hottest A-lister armed only with a pair of scissors and a big, rounded brush.

Then there’s the bit where you’re forced to sit staring at your own face in the mirror for at least an hour under unforgiving lighting, swathed in the least flattering item known to (wo)mankind: the black reverse hairdresser’s cape.

Oh, and the thing where you try to drink the nice coffee they’ve given you, only to discover that this jerks your head too much while someone wields a pair of sharp blades near your face – so you’re forced to keep perfectly still and take excruciating, tiny mouse sips.