Beauty shops of the past looked like pink powderpuffs. Not Platinum, a Carson City salon that stakes its reputation on steel.
The front counter is crafted from a truck tool box. Stylist stations are ringed in pewter with water pipe. And Craftsman toolboxes serve as rollabouts.
"We thought Carson was ready for a new concept look," says Larry Walthers, who owns the shop with partner Patricia Davin.
Walthers designed the look of the 2,700-square-foot shop himself but hired a sheet metal worker to build it.
The inspiration? "At a hair show in New York, I saw the coolest-looking mirrors," says Walthers. "Then at a bar in Las Vegas, I saw the tin walls and a kid with platinum hair."
A hairdresser for 45 years, Walthers is a member of the Nevada State Board of Cosmetology and is president of the national examination committee that develops cosmetology exams for licensure internationally.
