Talk about a first impression.
Stylist Diane Zuri was working on a client’s hair when a well-dressed gentleman entered Fluhme Glam Bar on Washington Road to inquire about a job opening.
“Right away I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh! I want this guy to work here,’” Zuri recalled. “You could feel the energy. He asked awesome questions. He asked questions that were intelligent with regard to this profession.”
Her client had pretty much the same reaction:
“She looked up and she said, ‘He needs to work here. He’s the perfect fit.’”
Owner Tiffany Fluhme apparently thought so, too, as she brought Wissam Awada and his 35-plus years as a hairdresser on board shortly after.
And Zuri can attest to the positive outcome.
“He loves what he does,” she said. “He has a passion for it, and it shows. And that’s the type of person we want on this team.”
His visit to the Glam Bar wasn’t the first time Awada ventured into a salon, more or less out of the blue, in hopes of employment.
As a high school student looking to earn extra money for his family — his father, a barber, died when Wissam was a year old — Awada approached the owner of a hairdressing business in his native Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.
“She said, ‘What do you know?’” he recalled. “I told her, ‘I don’t know anything, actually. But you can teach me.’”
He offered to sweep floors, make coffee and whatever else would be needed, to which the proprietor replied:
“Come in! You’re cute, and I like that.”
At first, Awada worked solely for clients’ tips. Later, he gained experience styling hair. Eventually, he moved to another salon and, as his client base grew, he became co-owner. And a few years later, he launched his own establishment, featuring three chairs in a modest amount of rented space.
“Then I decided to open a very big one, with eight chairs for hairdressing, four chairs for manicure-pedicure and two chairs for makeup artists,” he said.
He ended up hiring 17 employees for the various tasks to serve a base of more than 1,000 clients, including some of Lebanon’s better-known entertainers and habitués of high society. For his efforts, the Syndicate of Lebanese Actors and Artists recognized Awada for outstanding contributions to the field of cosmetology.
Success in his home country, though, couldn’t keep him away from a family member in need.
Last year, he moved to the United States to help his brother, Marc, a physician who lives in Erie, as he underwent treatment for cancer. Having already been sponsored by Marc for U.S. citizenship, Wissam was able to obtain his permanent residency card expediently.
His extensive professional experience allowed him to earn his Pennsylvania cosmetology license on the basis of reciprocity, and he joined the staff at Erie salon ZEF Color Society as a master stylist.
Marc is now cancer-free, and his plans include retiring next year and relocating to Pittsburgh, the hometown of his wife, Ruth. Intending to live near them in the long term, Wissam already ventured south from Erie.
“I wanted something bigger. I wanted to go forward,” he explained. “So I moved to Pittsburgh, trying to find an opportunity here.”
He noticed Fluhme Glam Bar while Ruth was showing him around Mt. Lebanon, and for the time being, he commutes between the pair of salons that employ him. On the road, he tends to observe the relatively orderly habits of Pittsburgh-area drivers compared with their counterparts in and around Beirut, a city of 2 million-plus people notorious for its frequent gridlock.
On the job, he is impressed with his clients’ general devotion to punctuality: “It doesn’t happen in Lebanon.”
As for Awada’s western Asian heritage, colleague Zuri is eager to discover more about it.
“He’s teaching me Levantine Arabic,” she said, referencing the mother tongue of 60 million people in Lebanon and nearby nations. “He has a lot of clients who are Lebanese, and I want to properly greet them. And I’d like to say some words to them in a language they understand that is natural for them.”
She enjoyed accompanying Awada to the 2024 Pittsburgh Lebanese Festival at Our Lady of Victory Church in Beechview. The South Hills city neighborhood boasts a sizable number of folks who share his country of origin.
“It was really nice to go in and be recognized by people who are his clients, and to learn that culture,” Zuri said.
Despite departing from a thriving business overseas, Awada welcomes the international change of scenery.
“If I have this opportunity to come to the States,” he said, “who would say no?”