Greg May is finishing up with a client when I arrive at his Yorkville salon. He gives me a hug in lieu of a handshake, his hands still dripping from the sink. Given the hairstylist’s outgoing friendliness, there’s a good chance he would have hugged me in any case. At a nearby café, the staff greet him warmly. He’s worked in the neighbourhood for twenty years.
May’s first love wasn’t hair, but martial arts. It wasn’t easy growing up in 1970’s Muskoka, the sensitive son of European immigrants. His father, whose true nationality is still a mystery to the family, worked in radio in East Germany. But when the KGB suspected him of leaking Soviet secrets, he and his German wife made fast for Canada. In Muskoka, May’s father designed houses while his mother was the only woman in town wearing pants.
“People would look at my Mom like, ‘What does she think she’s doing?’” he says. “That prompted her to do it more, because that’s the way she was.”
Young Greg was also harassed for his exotic, Eastern European clothing. His interest in martial arts may have started to protect himself, but he would return to its lessons on the importance of form throughout his life. Although he can vividly recall Fonzie’s pompadour on Happy Days and claims to have had the first mullet in Muskoka (back when that was something to brag about), hairdressing was not a profession that crossed his mind. Instead, he wanted to be a cop.
Moving to Toronto at 17, May squatted in abandoned buildings and scoured up money anyway he could–washing dishes, waiting tables, hosting. Now with long, blonde locks (“because I didn’t have enough money to cut my hair!”), he was an attractive young man. Throughout our talk, he proudly shows me pictures of his younger self, his clients, and his beautiful family on his iPhone– along with revered quotes from Bruce Lee. A girlfriend took him to her modeling gig and the organizers offered him a spot in the show. This led to photo shoots for Sears, Hugo Boss, and Harry Rosen, but May only thought of it as a way to save money. As soon as he could afford it, he applied to Sheridan College to become a police officer.
“I hated it,” he admits. “I thought that I’d help people, I’d defend them, and be this super hero guy, and it’s not about that at all. What I found was martial arts makes you very tough, it makes you a good fighter, it makes you confident, but it also makes you more gentle, more soft in a way… When I went to school to be a police officer, I found a lot of the guys wanted to revert me back to this macho, tough guy. So I left.”
It wasn’t until walking by Vidal Sassoon one day that hairstyling piqued his interest. Fortunately, the renowned company was looking for an apprentice and he acquired the coveted position.
“As soon as I walked through those doors at Vidal Sassoon, everything came together. They base all their haircuts on architecture. Form follows function. Because my father built houses, I looked at hair as architecture as opposed to fashion. I fell in love.”
As with martial arts, May threw himself entirely into his new career. He learned Sassoon’s dedication to precision cuts. “When you cut hair you can’t cut past the second knuckle,” he explains. “You do two cuts to the second knuckle, and then you have to take the section again, and do another cut. Because if you cut to the second knuckle, you naturally lose a bit of tension, so the line isn’t perfect.” Comparing cutting hair to martial arts, he says that once you’ve mastered the foundation, then you can start adding your own take, gently breaking the rules. That’s how craft becomes an art.
His dedication paid off. He became the Creative Director of the salon in Holt Renfrew. He became a shareholder and partner at his next job, and ten years ago he opened up his own salon, which he named Greg May Hair Architects. As with any success story, there were hiccups along the way.
In the mid-1990’s, no haircut was bigger than the shag Jennifer Anniston wore on Friends. A client asked for it, and May was too young and insecure to admit he didn’t know how to replicate it. He did his best, shaving off the bottom with a razor. He created a rounded bob with long, straight strands that flipped out. It looked a little like Florence Henderson.
“She went home and then called back. She said, ‘You know what? You got to do something. This is just not cool.’ So she came back a couple days later. And I looked at it and said, ‘Let’s just cut the bottom off.’ When you took the bottom off, you got this beautiful, graduated bob. That’s how I started doing a graduated bob.” That look became May’s signature.
“I have other embarrassing stories,” he continues, enjoying this topic. He had another client, an older lady, whom he didn’t know was on blood thinners. “You know where this is going!” He was trimming her hair on the back with a razor. “And I guess she had a little mole…”
“You nicked the mole?” I ask.
“I cut the mole right off.” Blood dripped down the woman’s neck. “And because of the way I am as a person, I was more upset than she was. I was like, ‘Oh my God! Oh my God!’ I grabbed this cloth and pressed it on, and she was like, ‘Greg, Greg, it’s okay.’ And I was so upset because it wouldn’t stop bleeding. But I put a band aid on it and she was okay.”
He goes on to describe another disaster with the same woman when a different hairstylist dropped a pair of scissors on her head. They momentarily stood straight up, embedded in the woman’s scalp, before falling away as her white hair turned red. The hairstylist, more cool under pressure than May, calming soaked a towel in disinfectant and placed it on the cut, causing the poor woman to shriek like a banshee.
“We never saw her again.”
But for every bad experience, May has countless more good ones. Throughout his career, May’s gentle nature has helped him connect with people and make them feel good inside and out. He tells the story of a young woman who arrived three minutes late for an appointment with a very busy hairstylist. “In the 1980’s, some of the stylists were very…I don’t want to say mean. But they were ‘It,’ you know?” He refused to work on her and left the salon. May, still just an aspiring hairdresser, put down his broom, approached the crying woman, and offered to cut her hair.
“I didn’t know too much, but I took a comb and used the comb as a ruler. I took some scissors off someone’s station. And I went, ‘Snip, snip, snip.’ It probably took me 25 seconds. And she holds the mirror to look at the back, and says, ‘Oh my God, I love it! This was all I wanted. This was all I needed.’ Even though I liked what I was doing, that moment was when I thought, ‘This is it.’”
May agrees with my observation that you have to be a people person to be good at styling hair. He considers this when hiring for his salon. “There’s a saying, ‘Raise the star, don’t hire the star.’” It’s easier to teach skills than positive attitude or work ethic.
He used to think he wanted to run a huge salon with lots of stylists. Now he’s much happier with a more intimate, boutique-like location. But that doesn’t mean he’s not ambitious. He’s expanding his line of hair products, that already features shampoos, conditioners, wet styling, and finishing products. He is a perfectionist in all aspects, from the colour and smell, to the font on the packaging, and the shape of the bottle. (Growing up without a lot of money, he resents bottles that trap the last shampoo dregs in corners and you can’t turn upside down. May’s bottles are perfect cylinders.)
Every year, the Toronto International Film Festival keeps him busy and May counts many celebrities as clients and friends. He is still upset about missing his opportunity to work with Taylor Swift when she was on tour. Tired of her corkscrew curls, he envisioned straight hair and fringe, a look the singer adopted shortly after visiting Toronto. “It was my idea. And I could have done it.”
But the figure that haunts him, the star that got away, is Jennifer Aniston. When I ask him whose hair he still wants to cut, it’s no contest. “I don’t know why, but I’ve had a reoccurring dream. It’s really weird. I want to cut her hair.” Perhaps his early experience attempting ‘the Rachel cut’ has left him with unfinished business. Even after more than twenty years in the business, you never forget your first time.
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Max Mosher writes about style for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @max_mosher_.
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