Toby Hoogs for The New York Times
That is almost impossible to believe. With his black leather pants, tight shirts and spiky hair, he resembles an overconfident rock star. He looks like someone who could break your heart so badly, it would have split ends. Beautiful women often surround him or are hugging him. At his salon, Angus M, hugs are like mints: offered when you walk in and when you leave.
He is the only child of Paul Mitchell, the Scottish hairstylist who became famous in the 1960s for cutting hair so that it would move more freely, like women themselves were beginning to do. The elder Mr. Mitchell also helped found John Paul Mitchell Systems, the now-enormous beauty products company. The younger Mr. Mitchell grew up on his father’s solar-powered farm on the Big Island of Hawaii. “I’m just lucky my name wasn’t River or Rainbow,” he said.
Michelle Raab and Angus Mitchell, son of Jolina Mitchell and Paul Mitchell, the late hairdresser, during their wedding ceremony on the family’s estate in Hawaii.
By LOIS SMITH BRADY
Published: July 15, 2010
After his father died in 1989, Mr. Mitchell moved to Los Angeles and was beginning to establish himself — as a hairstylist and a ladies’ man — when he met Michelle Raab, who worked on the business side of the Vidal Sassoon Academy in Santa Monica, Calif. The two liked each other right away, but also avoided each other. Mr. Mitchell knew she had a boyfriend, a hairstylist. And she knew Mr. Mitchell’s reputation. “Angus was a playboy and that type of person frightened me because it would rip open all of my insecurities,” she said.
Ms. Raab, 41, also grew up avoiding mirrors. She was born in Trinidad and moved to San Diego with her mother when she was 11. “I was in Southern California wanting to be blond and blue-eyed,” she said. “I can remember staring at magazines and thinking, ‘If I stare at it long enough, will I end up looking like that?’ ”
Over the years, Ms. Raab and Mr. Mitchell admired each other from afar. Hard-working and ambitious, she eventually became the director of business development at the academy. She also became engaged to her boyfriend, even though their relationship was rocky. “When you don’t feel beautiful, you make bad decisions in love,” she said.
Meanwhile, Mr. Mitchell became engaged more than once but always got cold feet at the last minute. “I was like the runaway bride,” said Mr. Mitchell, who owns John Paul Mitchell Systems along with John Paul DeJoria, the other founder of the business.
In 2007, Mr. Mitchell hired Ms. Raab to work at Angus M, which was still in development. By that time, she was pregnant and Mr. Mitchell was engaged, again. In fact, he proposed to his girlfriend onstage at a hair show, with Ms. Raab in the front row. “I was so happy for him,” she said. “We were not on a crash course to end up with each other at all.”
But they did begin spending much more time together, going over everything from the salon’s spreadsheets to eco-friendly wall paints. “He’s clever and quick and strategic,” she said. “He’s gorgeous but I didn’t find out he was smart until later. I thought he was just a pretty face.”
They also began giving each other love and life advice, which both needed. He was becoming an increasingly unhappy playboy. “I was asking myself, ‘Why am I going out to a nightclub every night?’ ” he said. “ ‘What am I chasing?’ I’d done everything, and I was getting sad.”
Ms. Raab’s daughter, Mee, was born July 15, 2007. Her marriage began to crumble soon after. By 2008, her divorce was pending and she had moved out and into a new home: a tiny apartment on the top floor of an old wooden house in the Venice section of Los Angeles. “I had a crib, a couch that came out as a bed, a kitchenette, a bathroom,” she said. “It was kind of like a Rubik’s Cube. It would be one way for dinner, then I’d shift it around for bedtime.”
Mr. Mitchell had yet another new relationship, which didn’t work out.
Toward the end of 2008, after a long workday, he started to give her his customary good-night hug and air kiss. At this point, they had known each other for 15 years, and something shifted. “It was kind of, ‘Do I lean in and kiss her on the cheek or lean in and kiss her on the lips?’ ” he remembered. “Awkwardly, I went for the lips.”
He added: “We called each other the next day and said, ‘Did that really happen? Did you feel the same way? Should we try even further?’ ”
She insisted they forget the kiss — make it vanish like gray hair.
“She pushed me away,” he said. “I was the girl in the relationship. I kept saying, ‘Why can’t you connect with me and tell me how you feel?’ ”
She said she believed he would inevitably dump her, leaving her with a broken heart and unemployment checks. “She wasn’t about to let her guard down and I wasn’t about to walk away,” he said.
He finally persuaded her to try trusting him. “He kept saying, ‘You’re safe with me, you’re safe,’ ” she recalled.
On July 4, they were married in Hilo on Mr. Mitchell’s macadamia-nut farm. The ceremony took place at the bottom of three tall waterfalls (which provide electricity for the farm) with some of the 120 guests, in the shade of the banana trees, peering down near the top of the falls.
It was multicultural: The buildings on the farm are Balinese in style; the bridegroom wore a kilt in the Mitchell family tartan and arrived to bagpipe music; the bride walked to the waterfalls as the John Lennon song “Love” played over the outdoor speakers; and Earl Regidor, a minister of the World Ministry Fellowship, began the ceremony by blowing a conch shell. Mr. Regidor went on to describe love in a way that made it sound like a rich conditioner, something that heals and takes the tangles and difficulties out of life.
Wylder Flett, a groomsman, said the bride and bridegroom brought a lot of new experiences to each other. “Their balance is cool,” he said several days after the wedding. “She keeps him grounded. She’s not gaga about diamonds. Now, his new favorite thing is going to Target and stocking up on diapers, whereas she goes with him to the Ferrari dealership to figure out how to put a baby seat in a two-seater.”
A few days after the ceremony, the couple flew first class to Italy for their honeymoon. Although Mr. Mitchell can be very frugal (he reuses paper cups until they leak), he has flown first class many times. Ms. Raab never had.
“I was so emotionally moved by the fact that a poor little girl from Trinidad and Tobago could be there,” she said. “I don’t think it’s hit me yet. Angus says: ‘You’re a millionaire and you don’t even know it.’ I don’t think of myself as a millionaire. I don’t think I ever will.”
Once they boarded their chartered 83-foot yacht in Sardinia, she felt even more out of place. “I don’t know what people do on yachts,” she said from her cellphone while sunbathing on the deck. “I guess you’re supposed to lay around and look at other people’s yachts.”
She added: “Our luggage didn’t make it. But we have Champagne and caviar and bathing suits. Apparently, that’s all you need here.”
Still, Mr. Mitchell tries to be unfazed about his wealth. He has it now, but views it as temporary, like a wave.
“I like my toys but I always tell Michelle: ‘These attainable things, it’s not forever. If it was gone, would you still be with me?’ She laughs and says, ‘I would be happy to have a shaved-ice stand with you back in Hawaii.’ ”
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