Melissa Peverini

I've worked with Rod Stewart. If anyone's ever wondered how he got the hair that's been me for the last probably 12 years. I go on tour with him whenever he's doing shows through the east coast and Europe sometimes and they have a home here in Palm Beach and that's how I got connected with them and also his wife, Penny Lancaster, she's fantastic and they've been great friends and clients of mine. She's been with us for about ten years, but I've been with him for that long. Joey Kramer, the drummer of Aerosmith has been a good friend and a client for a long time as well. So I've worked with other musicians as well and some of course are probably the bigger names, but you'd be surprised, a lot of them do live down here. It's not a pedestrian city, it's a very quiet community in Palm Beach. And I've had the advantage of really being immersed in the community of the who's who of the wealth in America and even some outside of them. And Paloma Picasso - being in Palm Beach, you find a different clientele. It's not the Hollywood clientele, it's a much more socialite and wealthy clientele.

Working with Rod, he is sometimes more maintenance than a woman. He likes his hair done every two weeks. [laughs] It has to be perfect and sometimes the smallest bit of baby dusting to just a couple slicks of color to keep him looking like it never changes over the years. He's reinvented himself with his music and sometimes we do hairstyles that will inspire an era of music that he did back in the 70s, whether it was his songbook or his soul book collection. He's really maintained his vibrancy in his music and his hair. He's having a bad day, his hair is having a bad day. And he won't go outside. [laughs] But I'll tell you, he does have one of the best heads of hair that I've worked with over the years and it's all his.

Oh yes, he likes volume and we try different volumizing products. He definitely loves TG Catwalk products, those are some of his favorites for volumizing. And then he loves the VersiComb, even though it's a woman's product, the men love it. Even men that have more volume with their longer hair, fuller hair.

I know that I've collected his hair over the years, whether we've been in some of the funniest locations, whether it's been on a bus or in a bathroom, I always make sure I clean up and as I clean up his hair and then I save it. I have pouches of it over the years. What I'll do with it, I don't know.

Right, exactly.

Well, I've been a stylist for many socialites and rock stars for probably 20 years and traveled all around the world from Europe over to California repetitively. So my creation of the VersiComb was to be able to give [my clients] something that was simple styling, on-demand anytime, anywhere. They didn't know what sort of tools, brushes, combs, teasers, detanglers to use and they had just a collection of too many. And I also found that when I had to pack my bag, I also had too many tools. So I really wanted a hybrid, something that would make it easy for me as a stylist and also for the customer. My celebrity clients, whether they were backstage, and needed something as a quick fix, whether or they were going over to Europe and they just wanted to throw in their beach bag, I wanted something that just reduced the clutter for them.

They have four tools in one: you have detangling comb, you have a teasing brush, and you also have the wide-tooth for separating and smoothing. The wide side acts as a hairbrush, but you're not having bulky aesthetic parts. And then the narrow side is great for using for wet detangles and then you can flip it when it's dry to help just smooth out the hairstyle, it also works great for teasing. I mean there are a lot of teasing combs and brushes, but they're not sexy and the VersiComb is probably the sexiest tool. It folds in half and it can fit in the smallest evening bag or in the back pocket of someone.

We are going to be available in stores, that's in the process right now. Right now, we are online so it's versicomb.com.

Well I've been a stylist here in eastern Palm Beach for 20 years and going back and forth to New York. A lot of clients that I work with in Palm Beach either live here or they season here. It's a seasonal area so I find in my summertime I definitely travel a lot more. We're in the peak of season right now, so it's great being down here in the season when everyone comes down and they just have a lot more relaxed sense of living and the hairstyles become more relaxed and the colors are completely different in Florida, and I know when I travel to New York or wherever I go and the color isn't same. So that's always been my challenge, climate-based color and what works from area-to-area, but it's always nice that people definitely want to carry the sunshine with them wherever they go and that's something that I've learned over the years.