The barber behind Mitt Romney’s impeccable hair

last updated 8 January 2015

Mitt Romney’s hairdresser is fed up, said Michael Barbaro and Ashley Parker in The New York Times. For years, Boston-area barber Leon de Magistris has been trying to persuade the Republican presidential candidate to update his conservative coiffure. “I will tell him to mess it up a little bit,” says De Magistris, 69, who has cut Romney’s hair for the past two decades. “I said to him, ‘Let it be more natural.’” But Romney refuses to alter his trademark style: short at the neck, neat on the sides, and swept back off the forehead. “He wants a look that is very controlled. He is a very controlled man. The hair goes with the man.”

Romney is similarly strict about what he’ll put in his meticulously coiffed mane. He won’t use hair dye, gel, or mousse. “[It] is not, what do you call it, in his DNA,” says De Magistris. His client gives him other reasons to despair. During long stints on the campaign trail, Romney sometimes trims his own hair. “It doesn’t make me happy,” says the Italian immigrant, “but what can I do?” De Magistris wonders what will happen if Romney wins next year’s presidential election. “I don’t think he will call me from the White House and say, ‘Come down and cut my hair.’ But if he does, I will come.”