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.
Toby Hoogs for The New York Times
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.
