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June 1, 2004 by  
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Anything girls can do, guys can do better. Excuse me? Isn’t this the new millennium? Isn’t that backward? No, not when we’re talking about makeovers and men. If they did it to a mother and daughter in honor of Mother’s Day, they can do it to a father and son in honor of Father’s Day, right? Oh yes, Honey.

Not that boutique owner Todd Ramos and hair designer Mario Romero had ever made over a truck driver and a skateboarder/college student before. But with Pat Egan and his high-topped son Dustin, that’s exactly the challenge that they had to work with. And did they look like a trucker and a skateboarder?

“Oh yes,” confirms Romero, discreetly. “Very trucker.”

Ramos takes it just one step further (go figure). “Pat was very – caveman,” he concludes, after searching carefully for just the right word. “In fact, maybe just a little bit barbaric – but just a little bit.” Well, that’s good; at least he wasn’t a lot barbaric. Surprisingly, Pat and Dustin use neither the word “caveman” nor “barbaric” to describe themselves. Pat admits that as a self-employed trucker specializing in hauling oil equipment between Texas and Louisiana, he laughs out loud at the idea of having to be a pretty boy every day. “Not exactly,” he says, after the belly laugh subsides. However, he has been told, he says, that he doesn’t “look like a truck driver.” (Guess he didn’t ask Romero.) And son Dustin is a college student – what more do you expect? He does what college students do: He goes to class (he says), stays up late and eats pizza (for breakfast). He doesn’t remember his last haircut, although he defends himself by explaining that he “does his own hair.” Hmmmmm.

Ramos boils it all down to just a few words: “They were makeover virgins.” ‘Nuff said. The deflowering began, as usual, at Romero’s Avant Garde Spa Hair and Makeup Studio for the makeover groundwork. Although one might assume that a couple of self-described “guy’s guys” might resist, just slightly, having their cuticles trimmed or, say, eyebrows waxed, Pat and Dustin were absolute team players and completely game.

“They were just great sports,” says Ramos. Pat and Dustin lost their makeover “virginities” quickly. First, they were mani-ed and pedi-ed (“they lost lots of callous weight”) and then reported to Romero for new hairstyles.

Mario admits that he was more than a little alarmed when confronted with Pat’s hair. According to Mario, Pat’s ‘do was “dangerously close to a mullet – it was definitely in the mullet family.”

Luckily for Pat, however, Romero was able to regain his composure enough to re-create mullet-man into a closely-cropped, clean-shaven guy’s guy. “He’s kinda like a trucking Marlboro Man,” Ramos muses, admiringly.

Romero was similarly shaken initially with the Dustin Hair Project. “He just had so much hair everywhere!” Romero exclaims. “I mean, I plucked two-inch hairs off his neck!”

A disturbing experience, no question. However, Romero promptly recovered from the hair-on-the-neck incident and left Dustin with a smart Ashton Kutcher-like do, freshly-trimmed eyebrows and, of course, a pristinely groomed neck. From scruff to stuff – hot stuff, that is. Time for some duds.

It was off to the Foley’s downtown with Ramos for a clean, fresh summer look. Pat is, as usual, in his work uniform and Dustin in shorts and a T-shirt. But not for long. Soon, Pat is sporting a Perry Ellis shirt under a Hart Schaffner Marx blazer with Kenneth Cole slacks, his steel-toed boots replaced with Kenneth Cole Reaction sandals. He was decidedly “dapper,” describes Ramos.

And for Dustin, his T-shirt, shorts and high-tops that Ramos was convinced had done a tour of duty in the military were banished in favor of a brightly striped Perry Ellis short-sleeved shirt and Perry Ellis linen pants. The finishing touches for a hip, college guy are a Wilson’s athletic jacket and Puma shoes.

“He’s a perfectly hip college dude now,” boasts Ramos.

So, what do Dapper Dad and Hip College Dude Son think of their new looks? “I love it!” says Pat without a moment’s hesitation. “I will definitely keep this up.” He confesses he wouldn’t waste all this style on the inside of his rig, but “I’ll definitely wear this out.”

As for Dustin, although he initially thought he was doing this just as moral support for dad, he digs his new look. Although he wouldn’t say it, Ramos and Romero can and did, “College co-eds, watch out!” H

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