Ask an Expert: Makeup and Hair PAUL PODLUCKY OF PAUL PODLUCKY 25 E. 67th ST., LEXINGTON AVE.; 212-717-6622
By Denise Penny
From the Fall 2005 New York Wedding Guide
What should women expect when they go to you?
I work with girls who’ve experienced the best, so I have to deliver. My taste level is excellent but simple; our mantra is “Restraint and Refusal”—we call it the Double-R Ranch. I don’t like cha-cha.I like Grace Kelly, Audrey and Katherine Hepburn. I’m fairly expensive: $4,000 for the bride and the mother or the first bridesmaid. But I’m the whole package: a nurturing support system, the cheerleader who keeps the spirits up, and I help style the shoots. Mine is a God-given sophisticated eye.
So you must be booked solid. W magazine called me the rich girl’s favorite. I do consultations on my day off, and it’s $650 a trial for just the makeup and hair. It takes a long time. People are really crazy about their weddings.
What’s the craziest you’ve had?
I had a bride ask me to cut off all her hair in the few minutes between the ceremony and the party. So there I was, during the yichud, cutting her hair into a bob at The Four Seasons restaurant.
Do you chase the bride around during the wedding for touch-ups?
No, they come to me, so I wait with a book in a room somewhere. At a wedding at the public library, I waited for three hours in a Tom Ford Gucci tux that was soaked from the rain because security made me walk around the building without an umbrella. I was so angry. Sometimes I wait for two, three hours. Sometimes they don’t come back at all. Even if they don’t, it’s a luxury knowing that they can.
How do you take crying into account?
I have to be a little heavy-handed so that when they lose it, it’s still perfect.
