South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Man behind fashion’s most famous bob
Being Wintour’s hairstylist is glamorous, but it is his art that gets Anastasis talking
NEW YORK — For the past six years, at 8 a.m. sharp, Andreas Anastasis has walked to Anna Wintour’s Greenwich Village town house, where for about 20 minutes every weekday he maintains upkeep, whether it’s cutting, coloring, spraying, blow-drying or styling, of the most instantly recognizable bob in fashion — maybe the world. A short distance from there, he has spent nearly a decade running his namesake salon. The only magazine in the waiting area is Vogue.
But back at his loft in New York’s meatpacking district, Anastasis practices another discipline. For this one, he keeps the heads hidden.
During a recent visit, plaster casts of muscular backs and thick calves protruded from walls like the specters of ancient Greek warriors. On a nearby plinth, the breasts, buttocks, fists, forearms and stomachs of his friends and lovers were strewn about, waiting to join the
47-year-old artist’s sculptural collages.
Nothing in the apartment hinted at his career beyond art. Which makes sense, because, except for the odd picture on his Instagram feed, he doesn’t talk about it.
As the top editor of American Vogue since
1988, Wintour has long been the subject of public fascination and scrutiny.
Those close to Wintour understand the importance of discretion. In turn, that discretion keeps them close to her.
“Anna’s one of the most loyal people I know,” said Anastasis, who has no other regular celebrity clients. “When you go to her home, almost everyone working there has been there forever.”
During the early days of the pandemic, when no one was getting their hair done Anastasis continued to show up at Wintour’s house as he always had, except that he wore a hazmat suit. After each of her public appearances, he scrolls through Getty Images to make sure her hair was properly patted down. When Wintour travels to Europe for fashion shows, he ships dyes along with detailed instructions to ensure that the international stylists her team hires maintain her specific shade of caramel blond. And when he’s out of town, he entrusts Lisa Jillian Marconi, a former employee of his who now works at Vidov West salon, with the responsibility.
“I’m more obsessed than Anna is,” he said. “When it’s not perfect, I get so mad.”
“His level of dedication is rare and a pleasure to be around,” Wintour wrote in an email when asked about Anastasis. “Always there when I need him, at whatever hour of day or night, and so careful and meticulous about his work. I feel lucky to have known Andreas for so many years and I’ve seen his skill, creativity and commitment time and again. I enjoy my time with him.”
Wintour wrote, “I trust him totally.”
As she should. To every question that hewed too closely to Wintour’s private life — Does she
meet him with freshly washed hair? Does she like to chat? Gossip? Laugh? Does she wear her trademark sunglasses at home? — Anastasis had the same reply: “That’s between her and I.”
He admitted, though, that people might be surprised by her warmth. “I love working with her,” he said. “She’s always been so nice to me.”
According to Anastasis, she has also been encouraging and complimentary of his art practice. “I’ve photographed her dogs and given her the framed pictures as gifts,” he said about her goldendoodles. “She totally gets it.”
Begin again
On a sunny day in May,
Anastasis was dressed in a white tank top and black gym shorts that showed off a few of his many tattoos. He sat at his computer searching for a video he animated from the slices of his own MRI.
“I just have so much energy to create. And I’d keep going, too, if I hadn’t run out of space,” he said.
Elsewhere in his home, there were cloudy resin pour paintings; blown-up photographs he’d taken with a disposable camera when he was 15; and a pair of awards for two short films he directed on the topic of mental health.
Anastasis was raised by Cypriot immigrants in the town of Beckenham, Kent. His father, a cobbler, made shoe samples for Jimmy
Choo. His mother owned Fiji Unisex Hair Salon, where older women from the neighborhood would go for their weekly shampooand-set treatments. From a young age, he loved hair.
So it came as a surprise when he enrolled in the London College of Fashion’s fashion design technology program. “You know what’s messed up?” said Anastasis. “I went into fashion because my dad said only gay men do hair.” Laughing, he added, “Well, that didn’t work.”
In his early 20s, after working at one of Toni & Guy’s London salons for about a year, Anastasis moved to New York. He crashed on a cousin’s couch in Jersey City until he saved enough money cutting hair to afford the rent on an attic apartment in Murray Hill, a neighborhood in Manhattan.
By day, he worked as a stylist at Robert Kree salon; at night, he was a go-go boy at clubs such as Twilo and Limelight. “I was doing hair on acid,” said Anastasis, whose drug use eventually cost him his job at the salon.
When he was 28, he flew back to London to activate his green card. His parents picked him up at the airport. “I was really spiraling,” he recalled. “My mom saw me and immediately said, ‘You look like death.’ That’s when I knew I needed to get clean. And that’s when the second part of my life began.”
Anastasis returned to New York and successfully begged for his job back.
‘As you know, I can be quite demanding’
More than a decade ago, Anastasis got the call that changed his life. A makeup artist friend of his said there was someone he needed to meet. “I can’t tell you who it is,” she said. “But it’s high profile. Just show up at the address.”
It was Wintour’s. She needed a blowout.
“I knew who Anna Wintour was, but I wasn’t that invested,” Anastasis said. He would see her every few months when her longtime hairstylist was unavailable. Roughly six years into Anastasis’ casual arrangement with Wintour, during which time he opened a salon of his own, her stylist retired.
“One day Anna turned to me and said, ‘Susan’s leaving. Would you be open to taking over?’ ” said Anastasis. “She goes, ‘As you know, I can be quite demanding.’ ”
But he bristled at her portrayal as a ruthless editor. “When a guy does what she does, he’s a businessman. But Anna gets such a hard rap because she’s a woman. It’s frustrating,” he said. “Listen, without getting too deep about it, I consider her a friend. In my hair career, she’s without a doubt the highlight. Even when I retire from hair, I won’t retire from Anna. As long as she’s going, so am I.”