A sexy Manhattan party girl who the feds say led a double life as a Russian spy showed her true colors the first time she stepped into a Financial District hair salon.
“I want red!” Anna Chapman demanded, the accused secret agent’s stylist told The Post.
When Chapman walked into Nadine’s Ellysium Hair Salon on Maiden Lane six months ago, she was a brunette, hairdresser Amos Sharpe said yesterday.
“The first time she came in, it was just for a blow-dry. She came in with brown hair and I said, ‘I’ll fix your color,’ ” Sharpe recalled. “And she said, ‘Yes, I want red!”
She was apparently happy with the look — Chapman thereafter came in every three weeks for a color, cut and blow-dry. She told Sharpe she worked in real estate, giving him a business card that read on the back, “Explore your possibilities.”
Chapman, born Anya Kuschenko, was busted this week on charges she was spying for Russia — as were nine other US residents.
Authorities rolled up the ring after Chapman missed a scheduled meeting Sunday with a purported Russian spymaster — who actually was an undercover FBI agent investigating her.
The feds, who feared she was going to flee to Moscow, said she used a laptop computer to communicate every Wednesday with a Russian agent from various locations in the city.
“I always thought she was very mysterious,” salon owner Nadine Jannuzzi said. “She was very difficult to open up. I wanted to pull her out of her shell. This now all makes sense. It explains why she was so mysterious. It’s the quiet ones you’ve got to worry about.”
Others said she was an ambitious party girl always trying to sidle up to business bigs, purportedly to further her Internet real-estate business.
British media said she did the same thing in London, getting near several billionaires on the social circuit while working at a hedge fund and Barclays Bank. Britain’s MI5 spy agency is now investigating her.
A friend from Russia told Britain’s Guardian newspaper that Chapman as a teen was a “party animal,” introducing pals to Western bands like Metallica and Nirvana.
The man she claimed was her ex-husband — French supermarket-chain president Vianney Mulliez — yesterday denied ever even knowing her.