Jie Matar Is Cutting Hair at McAllister Spa

Some hires you announce quietly. This one deserves the headline.

Jie Matar is on the floor at McAllister Spa. If you lived in Toronto in the 2000s you already know the name, and possibly the haircut. If you didn't, here is the short version of a long story.

The Toronto years

Jie trained at a hairdressing school in Paris in 1985 and built his career in Toronto. In 2002 he opened Salon Jie on Avenue Road with forty stylists working under him and a "private cutting theatre" where a consultation with Jie himself carried a three-week waiting list. The Globe and Mail profiled him. Streets of Toronto asked whether the city's priciest haircut was worth it and answered its own question by the last paragraph. Another well-known Toronto hairdresser put it this way in print: "Jie is more famous than his clients."

His clients were not exactly obscure. Toronto's press credited him with the heavy bangs Nelly Furtado wore for several seasons. Kim Cattrall, Heather Mills, Paris Hilton and Tori Spelling sat in his chair. During the film festival he cut for the film people.

Why we are telling you this

Because you can book him. That's the part that still feels a little unreal to us.

Jie joins McAllister Spa as a Director, and he is requested most for precision haircutting — the discipline of reading density and growth pattern and deciding where the weight should sit before a single cut is made, so the shape behaves once it is dry and lived in. He is also one of three stylists here who specialize in curly and textured hair, alongside Darlene Mayorca and Fariba Asgari, and he works in color, balayage, keratin and smoothing. He sees guests in English and French.

The thing nobody expects from a name this big

Here is what we noticed first, and it isn't on any résumé.

Jie is a team player. He learned every name on the floor in his first week, including the front desk and the shampoo assistants. He asks the colorists what they'd do before he starts a cut on a color guest. He takes walk-ins on a Monday. He books the same free consultation everybody else here books. His work is priced individually rather than off the tiered menu, and you will hear the number before anyone picks up scissors, because that is how this salon works.

A salon of fourteen people only works if the biggest name in the room acts like the fourteenth. He does. That is the reason this post exists.

How to book him

Text us and ask for Jie. Consultations are free, as always. His full profile, with his specialties and languages, is on his team page, next to everyone else's.

Welcome to Miami Beach, Jie. The humidity is not a rumor.