Crowning glory

Molly Watson How much should a sensible woman pay for a hairdo? £20? £50? In most provincial salons one would be hard pushed to spend much more than £80 on even the most dramatic of hairstyles.

But if you're a man, particularly a man with a glamorous blonde to run, I suggest you look away now; because in places where hairdressing is now part of the luxury goods market alongside handbags and spa treatments, a single visit can cost several hundred pounds.

For years I wore my hair so short that I could get it trimmed for cheap at barber's shops, but now it is long I was intrigued to find out what that kind of money would buy me. My hair grows very thick, not quite straight and has a tendency to go frizzy on rainy days or whenever I put a hairdryer anywhere near it. Over the years it has settled into a slushy non-colour known in the hairdressing industry as 'mouse'. In summer it's roughly the shade of a digestive biscuit; in winter it's reminiscent of that same digestive biscuit dunked in a mug of tea. Worse still, I recently found several rogue strands of grey streaking across my left temple.

The first thing I learnt about truly swanky hairdos is that the colour is just as important as the cut. According to my friends in the high-rolling yummy mummy set, it is de rigueur to get your hair coloured (they refused to call it dyeing) by one expert and cut by someone else based at another salon.

For my colour, the yummies directed me to a man called Lee at a salon called Michaeljohn off Piccadilly. Lee doesn't pick up his tinting kit for less than £90 and charges north of £240 for a full head of highlights. But I soon discovered that what one really pays for is his refusal to take instruction. Whereas every other hairdresser I've ever encountered goes through the motions of delivering what the customer asks for — even when that customer is a I7-year-old with a face like a currant bun wanting to look like Michelle Pfeiffer — Lee made it clear from the outset that he would be the one making all the important decisions.

Once I was robed and settled in front of the mirror, my consultation went something like this: Me: 'I think I'd like to look blonder. Something subtle that will hide the grey and give the impression that I've been on a sailing holiday somewhere sunny.'

There was a long pause while Lee fingered the ends of my hair dismissively and shrugged.

Me again: 'Er, do you think that would work?'

Lee: Nope. What I think we'll do is take your whole colour down a tone and make your hair as dark as your eyebrows. That is so much more flattering than blonde highlights.'

Me: 'Um. Won't that make the grey more obvious?'

Lee: 'I don't let anyone worry about greys until they're at least 50. Now let's get you washed.'

He was absolutely right of course. After spending several hours with my hair covered in a noxious paste while I eavesdropped on the man to my right supervising his young Russian girlfriend's haircut, I emerged on to Albemarle Street. I was £130 poorer but looking at least five years younger and rather French thanks to a mass of dark hair that made my skin seem very pale and delicate.

For my cut I went to Real Hair, Elle Macpherson's local salon in Chelsea, where I explained to my stylist, Charlie (who at £75 a go was at the more reasonable end of the price scale), that I wanted to take the French thing a step further and have my hair cropped really short again. She too immediately refused my request on the grounds that my face was the wrong shape for that kind of caper. Instead, she kept my hair shoulder-length but cut it into all kinds of layers so that I looked casual yet effortlessly glamorous — think of Reese Witherspoon as a tousled June Carter in Walk the Line when she wakes up the morning after sleeping with Johnny Cash for the first time.

And therein lies the rub. Designer hairdos are like designer shoes; they make you look and feel marvellous but it's the lifestyle they demand rather than the eyepopping initial outlay that really stings. When you blow £450 on a pair of Manolos, you don't just sign the cheque and stroll off to a bus stop — you totter away to spend a tenner on a taxi. Just as I can cover no more than 300 yards in my favourite heels before each step becomes absolute agony, so my new hairdo stopped looking fabulous after about three days when I had to wash it.

Without Charlie's magic with a hairdryer I look depressingly like myself. But a blowdry at Real Hair or somewhere similar costs more than £35 — and that's before you tip the people who wash your hair, massage your scalp, bring you a coffee and finally do something with a brush and a stream of warm air that makes your hair bounce out of your head the way Rachel's does on Friends.

Yet the genius of these places is that it is impossible to recreate the effect they produce for yourself. The reason Lee's potion of dye costs six times more than any of the DIY sachets I've tried at Boots is because it transforms your hair into a glossy mane of colour instead of something not at all what the picture on the front of the packet promised. And seriously — I'd have more chance of filling my own rotten teeth than picking up a hairdryer and mirror and making the back of my head look like Reese Witherspoon's.

Is £200 too much to spend on a hairdo? Of course. But did it feel absolutely worth it for three glorious days? You bet it did.