Prices for haircuts have climbed so steadily over the past couple of years that the days of getting a hundred-dollar do from a top stylist are long gone. Just a blow-out can run around $70. So, whose scissors are worth the big bucks? Alain Pinon at AKS (694 Madison Avenue, at 63rd Street; 888-0707) is responsible for making Julianna Margulies and Lena Olin look like people we would want to look like, but Pinon's prices are modest: $175 per cut. Kevin Mancuso, who is so beloved by Cindy Crawford that she wrote the foreword to his book, The Mane Thing, charges $300 for a cut at Peter Coppola Salon (746 Madison Avenue, near 65th Street; 988-9404). The same choppy layers he gave Winona Ryder and Ashley Judd could get a suburban secretary past the door at Float.
"I could write a book about all the bad styles I got before I found him," offers one devotee of Simon Sabag, the choice of socialites like Susan Gutfreund and Carroll Petrie. Sabag, who works out of Daniel Salon (22 East 66th Street; 717-2060), is known for deflating the latter's bouffant into a soft layered clip with wisps around the neck. He also specializes in those hair extensions you may not realize you've been seeing on all those celebrities -- or did you really think Gwyneth Paltrow and Helen Hunt were both Rapunzels with hair down to their waists?