These three couples are taking a $2,400 class at the Louis Licari Salon that teaches husbands how to style their wives’ hair. (Brian Zak)
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It’s a chilly Monday night in early May, and Kelly and Jeffrey Langberg are cozying up to each other, champagne in hand. It’s getting warm in the room — and not just from the heat the couple is generating, even after 29 years of marriage. No, it’s the 2,000-watt blow-dryer Jeffrey is wielding in his other hand.
During the day, the investment banker might take the private-equity world by storm, but right now, the only serious business at hand is styling his wife’s silky chestnut hair.
“I’ve been telling her for 20 years I was Warren Beatty’s understudy in ‘Shampoo,’ ” jokes the 65-year-old, whose wife Kelly, 59, is an image consultant.
“She’s the only person I’ve met who’s never done her own hair. She goes [to the salon] three times a week — it’s crazy!’ ”
Welcome to the inaugural class of Blow Ed. at the Upper East Side’s posh Louis Licari Salon, where a man can permanently earn his way out of the doghouse — or, in the case of Langberg, cut down on his wife’s pricey salon visits — with a skilled flip of the wrist.
Over the course of six weeks — and for the hefty price tag of $2,400 — men are taught anti-frizz fundamentals by head stylist Arsen Gurgov, who created the class after repeated demands from his longtime clients.
“Clients would say, ‘Why can’t my husband be more like you?’” says the 32-year-old Gurgov, whose regular $95 blowouts can quickly add up, especially since many clients make multiple visits in any given week.
After all, for as long as bad hair days have existed, there’s been a male stylist to banish them. And tonight, Gurgov is showing a group of hapless but eager husbands how.
“From Day 1, she’s asked me to do her hair: ‘I wish you could blow-dry my hair,’ she’d say out of exasperation in the morning,” says 43-year-old Dan Menchini of Park Slope, whose wife, Lark, 35, has been nudging him to pitch in around the kitchen (and the bathroom) for years.
“She takes her hair really seriously.”
Gurgov says his teachings go well beyond the basics of brushing and blow-drying.
“He’ll save money, she’ll get attention; it’s sensual. It’s like cooking class together — except the husband is blow-drying for the wife. It’s date night with the hubby.”
But Menchini isn’t quite convinced.
“We went to a cooking class once,” he says. “I did most of the cooking; she did most of the eating.”
So, how did he get roped into this?
“I get roped into a lot of things,” says the affable Kevin James-type, who lied when he told friends where he was tonight (“This is the sort of thing that takes awhile to live down”).
Lark, a publicist and mom of three young children, tries to buck him up: “He owns a moving company — he’s the ultimate guy’s guy. But I have no time for anything these days, let alone my hair. I literally dream of waking up and not having to do my hair.”
The perky blonde, who keeps her naturally curly hair in a bun, is cautiously optimistic. It is, after all, the first time Dan has wielded a styling tool — if you don’t count that one time he accidentally burned himself on the flatiron in the bathroom: “I didn’t know what it was until she told me!”
He has his work cut out for him, at one point asking Gurgov, “Isn’t smoke supposed to come from the hair?”
“We might have a problem here,” says his wife nervously.
Matt Schechter, 30, is another attendee with a poor track record when it comes to styling his wife’s hair.
“I was running late for a wedding,” recalls his wife, Amy, a 36-year-old real-estate broker who is pregnant with the couple’s first child.
“It came out really poufy on one side and I wound up keeping it in a bun for the wedding.”
But Gurgov — and the wives — remain hopeful that their husbands will eventually become, if not hair gurus, at least proficient with a brush.
“This is a good, happy medium, especially with a daughter on the way,” says Amy, who welcomes the extra hair help. “One day she’ll ask him, ‘Daddy, do my hair?’ ”
The men, on the other hand, seem to have a different strategy.
“I don’t want to do it that well because I’m afraid I’ll be locked into it,” admits Menchini. “I might have to hold back a little.”
But if the beauty experiment fails, all is not lost.
“The worst that can happen is you have a few laughs together,” jokes salon owner Louis Licari. “At the end, we give them a list of marriage counselors.”
dlewak@nypost.com