D.I.Y. disasters

To save money, people are waxing, trimming, and dyeing their hair at home. The results aren't always pretty.

There was a moment - although it's painful to recall - when coloring her own hair seemed like the fiscally responsible move for Kristen Marshall, a Newton mother worried about the economy. "I figured I can't save on food," Marshall said, and she certainly didn't want to deny her elementary school-age children anything. At $85 per month, her salon appointments - to dye her gray hair brown - seemed like the thing to go. "It seemed so vain, to spend all this money," said Marshall, 40.

That admirable line of thought led her to the drug store, where she bought a $10 box of auburn hair dye. The color Marshall chose looked quite fetching on the model on the box, but applying dye can be challenging, and Marshall, admittedly "not a hair person," did not achieve similar results.

"I must have stripped my hair," she said. "Or whatever. It was a disaster." A brassy, orange, striped disaster.

Marshall placed an emergency call to her colorist, and - her hair karma improving - he squeezed her in the next day. Of course she darted into the salon wearing a baseball cap. But instead of the usual single-process color, Marshall's hair required "corrective color." For those lucky enough to be unfamiliar with the procedure, it's a pricey, time-consuming, multi-part operation that involves getting rid of the problem color and rebuilding from there. Marshall's tab was almost $200. Not including tip.

Think of it as the unkindest cut (or color) of all. As the recession tightens its grip, a growing number of consumers are attempting to beautify themselves on their own, performing high-wire coloring (or tailoring or waxing) maneuvers previously left to the pros.

Business was down at 72 percent of hair salons surveyed last summer by the National Cosmetology Association, and executive director Gordon Miller says customers are "stretching out" their visits. (The group plans to conduct a new survey.) Meanwhile, the large Sally Beauty Supply, an international distributor of beauty products, is seeing a "steady rise" in nonprofessionals buying hair dye, according to spokeswoman Lindsey Miller.

Luckily, most DIY efforts go off without incident, but not all. Local grooming professionals are reporting a wave of crisis calls. On Newbury Street, Mario Russo says he has to "calm down" people who are "panicky" at the prospect of going to work or social events in their self-inflicted condition. In Revere, Andrea Segal, manager and master colorist at Raina's Hair Design Studio, routinely hears confessions from people who vow "I'm never doing that again." Cliff Bouvier, artistic director of Crew International, in Brookline, got three calls in one week, including one from a regular client who trimmed her own bangs between appointments to save money.

"She looked like Mamie Eisenhower," he noted, adding that he (like most hairdressers) would have trimmed her bangs for free, had she only asked.

As unfortunate as they are, extraordinarily bad hair days are not the only problem. Frugal groomers, waxing their upper lips and eyebrows, are suffering unsightly ingrown hairs, skin irritation, and the dreaded uneven brow - and then, of course, seeking urgent help.

"They come in and one [brow] is thick and one is thin," said North End aesthetician Dolores Maniscalco, of Dolores' Skin Care. Alas, there are no brow toupees to see people through the hard time. "We have to let the hairs grow in and we go from there," Maniscalco said.

And woe to the fashionistas-turned-recessionistas who've decided tailoring is the place to skimp. The damage has started showing up at the Jordan the Tailor shop on Newbury Street. "They cut their pants crooked, especially casual pants," said Jordan Tsavalakoglou. "Then I have to make it a little shorter than they want in order to make a straight line."

If there's one thing all the novice DIY'ers have in common - in addition to bad hair, strange brows, or flood-length pants - it's this: a "price is no object" attitude that's directly at odds with what landed them in the predicament in the first place.

Ori Brafman, co-author of "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior," attributes the desperation to the human tendency toward "loss aversion," and offers this explanation: "Once the color job goes bad, you've entered a situation where you're almost like a gambler sitting at a blackjack table. If you've lost $100, you'll do whatever you can to get back to even. Once you've dug yourself into a hole, ironically the tendency is to dig ourselves in even deeper financially. You are willing to spend even more to get back to where you were."

That's a mindset that resonates with Rev. Victoria Weinstein, a Norwell minister. She runs a blog that gives beauty tips for ministers (yes, really, check it out at www.beautytipsforministers.com), but even so, she messed up her highlights so badly that the receptionist at a salon in Copley Square gasped when Weinstein took off her hat.

"Oh, honey, I'm so sorry," she said, taking in Weinstein's "blorange" stripes. "But we can help you."

As a clergywoman, Weinstein ministers to the needy free of charge, but the kind of help the Aveda salon was offering did not come so cheap. Her corrective coloring was $180 - a lot for a woman who was initially so concerned about her shrinking retirement savings and an upcoming sabbatical that she attempted her own highlights. But even so, Weinstein was happy with the outcome.

"A Christmas miracle," is how she refers to her appointment.

Jill Andresky Fraser, a financial journalist who started an advice (and venting) blog to help people cope with fiscal anxiety (www.econowhiner.com), says situations like Marshall's and Weinstein's are understandable. "This is the thorny issue of our time," she said. "We are forced to make all kinds of choices that many of us haven't had to make in recent years. Many of us had the money to spend."

"You do things you think will save you money," she added, "but it's remarkable how many times you live to regret it."

Case in point: an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School who splurged for pricey organic hair dye from Whole Foods, only to chicken out when it came to covering her own gray.

"I'm not using it, but I'm not going to a salon, either," said the professor, who asked that her identity - and her color issues - be kept anonymous. "I look bad and I have lost money. Perfect."