Health & Beauty | Beauty: Products

When I walked into the Beehive Salon in Islip and met George Mennella, he was wearing a leather cowboy hat. I said, “I like your hat.” He said, “I like your face.” Now, how can you not like a guy who says something like that?

George invented a unique coloring system for hair he calls the Geo Palette Prismatic Hair System, which is available in eight salons around the country. It all began in the 1980s, when he created a “Lampshade Girl”—a model whose hair was constructed into a lampshade. He placed a wide-brimmed hat with the top cut out on her head and pulled the hair out, letting it drape over the rim and shaping to look like a lampshade. He lit the model and, while taking photos, was fascinated by the interaction between light and color. Thus began his journey to the Geo Palette.

George examined my hair and my skin tone and particularly my eye color. He selected four colors to use on me, explaining that these colors would be the most flattering. “You won’t need makeup,” he promised.

First, he colored the back hairs, using reusable plastic “palettes.” (All palettes employed in this system are reusable.) This made the selection of Beehive Salon, one of the salons that offers this system, perfect. Beehive is proud to be a “green” salon, said co-founder Jeanine Longo. She is also a fine artist and that fits well into George’s system, too.

“We fuse haircutting and coloring into one completely creative art,” he explained as he placed a plastic rim on my head and began brushing my hair out onto it, snipping it into shape. And sure enough, he literally painted each section of hair, strategically using all four colors. “Anyone who is trained in this system needs to have an artist’s eye and hand.”

Once I was completely painted, I sat under a hair dryer for twenty minutes and rinsed. Even wet, I could see the shimmer of multiple colors in my hair, but as he blew it out, I became increasingly fascinated. The shine and blending of the colors looked so natural and flattering! The cut, too, fit my face perfectly. Any trepidation I may have had about entrusting my hair to a stranger was completely gone.

The initial Geo Palette runs from $150-$300. Depending on the hair, the Palette can last from 3-6 months, with root touch-ups in between that range between $60-$75. George’s flagship salon, Haircraft Forward, is in Fresh Meadows, but Beehive Salon in Islip and Bewitched Salon in Woodmere are two of the salons offering Geo Palette, with several more coming soon to Long Island. George’s background, which in itself is an inspiring story, along with more information on his amazing system, can be found on his website, http://www.geopalette.com.