Clarabelle will see you now

Clarabelle Saldanha has no shopfront, no signage. In over 47 years of business, she has never once advertised. Still, clients find their way into her chair—some every few months for a haircut, others weekly for a blow-dry. Tucked away in the back of a building on Convent Road in Bandra, Mumbai, is Saldanha’s home and private studio—a place you wouldn’t stumble upon unless you knew where to look.

But find the right entrance—psst, it’s behind the wall of bougainvillea—walk through a small jungle of potted plants and vines maintained by Saldanha and her husband, Clestin, and you’ll arrive at the glass front door of their living room, where she’ll greet you with a smile and a bedazzled headband. The 65-year-old hairstylist, who’s known for her signature blow-outs, works out of her home five and a half days a week (Sunday afternoons and Mondays being her days off), tending to loyalists who’d never dream of going anywhere else.

Once inside, the first thing you notice is the music wafting from the speakers. Then the chandelier—heavy crystal, suspended above a wooden trunk—casting light across walls lined with crosses, artworks, and end tables with family photographs. “My husband and I are both very creative. We did up the space ourselves about 12 or 13 years ago,” she says while beckoning me into her salon. We walk past a console crowded with angel figurines to reach an intimate room with a mirrored wall and three chairs on one side, and a lone wash bay at the far end. “My home was smaller than this room when I first started,” she says. “I do the cutting, the weaving for highlights, and everything. My staff, who’s been with me for 25 to 30 years, do the blow-dries.” Her staff of three handle the prep, the wash, the finishing—but the decisive gestures are hers alone.

Saldanha started her career in hairdressing 47 years ago at Tham’s Ladies Hairdressers in Colaba. “I used to be a tomboy growing up and had very short hair. I was creative—making paper roses for wedding cards, gardening—so my dad decided he’d make me do hairdressing in the hope I’d groom myself,” she laughs. After a course at Toni & Guy in London, she returned to Bombay for a stint with an Italian hairstylist at the Taj. She then went on to work at Tham’s for nine years before branching out on her own in the ’80s in a tiny studio apartment.

For decades now, she has quietly shaped the looks of Bollywood actors like Lara Dutta Bhupathi (her favourite client) and Deepika Padukone (whose highlights she once did at 3 am and with whom she’s worked since her Bollywood debut). She has a roster of high-profile clients, though she laughs that some no longer come because of her rates. “Some of them say they get haircuts and blow-dries at other salons for free, so I let them go. I work too hard.”

What keeps the faithful returning after so many years? Her reputation rests, in part, on something deceptively simple: the blow-dry. “You have to feel the texture of the hair and accordingly use product,” she explains. “You lift from the roots before you do the ends, and I always tell my girls to take the hair in the front and blow-dry. It makes a huge difference.” The result is volume that clients claim survives even Mumbai’s humid monsoon air. Some travel across the city, from Colaba to Bandra, every week, simply for that ritual. “Everybody says nobody can blow-dry like you,” she says matter-of-factly. It’s a technique she has honed over a career that has spanned almost half a century.

Many stylists in her position would have gone the route of franchising, expanding, lending their name to salons across cities. Saldanha turned down every offer that came over the years. “I had a lot of people who wanted to collaborate with me and open salons in Delhi and stuff like that. But I can’t go there every week, I need to be here.”

That ethos extends to the way she books. There’s no online system, no manager handling a sheet. She takes appointments herself, fielding phone calls, WhatsApp messages, and photos of hair she asks clients to share before appointments. “I like to see their hair in advance, so I know what I have to do.”

On most days, Saldanha tends to a dozen clients. Appointments are usually breezy. A wash, cut, and blow-dry takes no more than 30 to 45 minutes, though friends tagging along often ask to be squeezed in. “Sometimes it’s crazy because there are people sitting in and out. And someone accompanying a client comes and they ask, ‘Can I also have a haircut?’ and I have to accommodate them.” Still, she insists it’s not impossible to get an appointment. “I manage to take everybody in—as long as they’re not in a hurry.”

Her look is as recognisable as her blow-dries: She dresses in racerbacks with sporty skirts or leggings, sometimes accessorised with a belt even if there are no loops, and a stack of necklaces and bracelets that never come off. “Even when I go through security at airports, they tell me to take it off and I tell them, you can take me wherever, I’m not taking it off.”

Her stamina is legendary. She starts her mornings at 6:30 and runs 10 kilometres up the slopes of Pali Hill. “My energy is full. I have no problems working all day,” she says. During the monsoon she substitutes her outdoor workout with bodyweight exercises in her plush living room, music always on. By 10:30 am, she is behind the chair, working until quitting time. After work, she makes herself a big mug of bone broth—a daily ritual—and either stays in or goes to visit a friend. Cooking is her other obsession. Her kitchen, which has an island counter and a door to her outdoor garden, is where she likes to spend most of her time. “Even if I go on holiday somewhere I want to cook for everybody,” she chirps.

Retirement is not on the horizon. “When you have a passion for what you do, you don’t feel like sitting still. Every client of mine tells me ‘Please don’t retire’. I’d be happy if I’m cutting someone’s hair and I fall dead. I love what I do,” she confesses. “That’s why I always say, don’t do something because you’re going to earn money. Find something you’re passionate about.” It isn’t bravado, but a simple statement of fact: for Saldanha, hairdressing has never been about franchising, scaling, or even money. It’s about the work itself—the satisfaction of seeing a client light up after a blow-dry, the music playing in the background, and the loyal circle of clients and friends who know exactly where to find her.