Cutting Edge, Crowning Glory

How did a foreign-born teenager segue from a career as an aspiring professional violinist at Juilliard to one of the pre-eminent forces in the competitive world of Manhattan hair and beauty salons? Hint: She's got rhythm.

After the loss of her parents (Korean mother, French father), Suki Duggan moved to the U.S. from Paris to study the violin. At 16, she took a summer job as a shampooer in New York's famed Ciandre Salon. "The boss was fond of me," she recalls. "He thought I was cute, so before my vacation ended, I got a chair and became a hairdresser."

Serendipitously, Duggan gave a haircut to a New York Times journalist, who reported that "Suki, with her fast, flashing scissors, cuts hair as though she's playing the violin." The story broke, the crowds lined up, and soon – ka-ching! ka-ching! Though she had taken a leave of absence from school, she never returned.

In the late '80s, Duggan opened her own salon, but a heart-wrenching 11 people who worked for her died of AIDS. "Suki doesn't have the word 'failure' in her vocabulary," she says of herself. When her then-fiancé, Anthony Duggan, offered to give up his own company to join hers, she agreed. Together, the couple hired more hairdressers, bought and renovated a building at 62nd and Madison, and – boom! – business took flight. In short order, Duggan published a book, launched a line of styling products, and won Editors' Choice Award for Most Newsworthy Female Hairstylist from a consortium of leading fashion publications.

Curtain on Act One: Duggan took a 10-year hiatus to raise her children: daughter Shannon, now 11, and twin sons, Sean and Jack, now 6 – all of whom attend Wandell School in Saddle River. Not surprisingly, all are musical.

"I had a nice intermission," says Duggan. "Now, it's time for Act Two." She's developing a line of hair color-retention products; is the online beauty expert for TheNest.com; and has co-authored, with Sharon Esche, her second book: Suki: The Beauty of Success, slated for publication in 2009. Her hairstyling philosophy: "Many people are sitting in a time zone. I try to modify in a gentle way – to update customers. I call it 'air cutting,' not hair cutting."

Beautiful and dramatic, with energy to burn, she is a force to be reckoned with. Once, after a customer intimated that Duggan wouldn't know from Mozart, she proceeded to sing an aria from Don Giovanni, right there in the salon. She juggles making breakfast, picking up the children from school and overseeing their piano practice with her own prodigious work schedule. A once-a-week dinner out with hubby is the pause that refreshes.

If anyone knows how to orchestrate a real-life musical, it's Suki Duggan.