Southport salon: Instead of going to N.Y., ‘they’re coming to see us’
SOUTHPORT — A new salon looks to offer the same high-end services to its clients, as the ones given by the celebrity stylists the owners trained under.
Danielle Camoro, who co-owns Camoro Salon with her husband Elie, said their new salon, Camoro at the Delamar, is offering New York City quality haircuts in the suburbs.
“Instead of commuting to the city, they’re coming to see us,” she said.
Camoro, a colorist, said she and her husband, a stylist, come from the city with their own elite pedigrees.
She started working at a salon when she was a teenager and realized she loved the environment.
“Being in a salon all day is pretty fun,” she said. “Everyone jokes around. Everyone works in teams..”
When she turned 18, Camoro moved to New York City and went to beauty school.
“After I graduated beauty school, I started working at a few high-end salons,” she said. “One of which is where I met Elie.”
She said her husband decided to go to hair stylist school because he was not enjoying college and ended up loving the line of work. The couple met at Fekkai, a salon named for celebrity hairstylist and entrepreneur Frederic Fekkai.
She said her husband worked with him for 20 years, later adding he has worked with models for Fashion Week, as well as with celebrities.
“Edie was his assistant, so he learned so much from him,” she said. “Frederic Fekkai had a huge appearance in Fashion Week, so Elie was always involved in Fashion week and he just loved that. Elie still does that every year.”
Camoro said she ended up landing at another wellknown salon in New York City, Marie Robinson, which has clients such as Jennifer Lawrence, Dakota Johnson, Anne Hathaway and Emma Stone. She said she spent 12 years training under Marie Robinson.
“She’s done almost every celebrity you can think of,” she said.
Camoro said it was never the plan to end up in Fairfield.
“We thought, for sure, that we’d never be in Connecticut,” she said. “When we were expecting the baby we were looking at townhouses and big apartments in Brooklyn to raise our family.”
But she and her husband eventually moved to Fairfield in 2018 to be closer to their siblings, Camoro said. While they continued to commute to the city at first, she said getting pregnant with her second child changed her plans.
“I was just like, ‘Why am I working so far away?”’ she said.
Camoro said there is a huge need for New York City talent in suburbia, so she decided to test it out beginning with the pool house in their backyard in 2019.
“We turned that into a hair salon,” she said. “We put one sink, one chair in there and we just started doing clients little by little.”
Camoro said she had a bunch of clients who already lived in Connecticut and used to commute to the city to see her. They instead dropped by the couple’s home, started telling their friends and spreading the word.
“The pool house ended up growing faster than I ever would have thought,” she said, adding the COVID-19 pandemic made it even more popular because it was not crowded and she would keep the doors open. “Everyone loved the pool house.”
With the hype surrounding it, Camoro said she and Elie decided to open a real salon. Opening in September, she said it grows every day, little-by-little.
While salons usually hire stylists and colorists from the area when they open, Camoro said they started from the ground up.
“We took colorist and stylists that I knew from New York, that were also training under Marie Robinson,” she said. “Once they finished their training they started to be a colorists here instead of New York. Those guys are brand new and don’t have the clientele yet, so they’re just starting their books now.”