Cock-a-Doodle 'Do

Sunrise Commute? Day-Long Meetings? It's Enough to Curl Your Hair at 5 a.m.

It's dark outside, but powerful street lights cast the salon in jarring day-glo relief. Two doors down, the coffee shop is just starting to percolate. Parking, in this normally congested thoroughfare, is a breeze.

Inside the Aveda Salon in Bethesda, where high-end botanicals perfume the room and pricey jeweled hair ornaments beckon near the register, owner Ray Claery boots up the computers. He greets the shampoo girl who's just arrived, but isn't quite talking yet.

It's still early. Really early. Smash-the-snooze-button early.

This does not deter the faithful -- patrons who like their haircuts served up in real time with their lives. That is to say, now . Having good hair takes time -- time they can't take from work and won't take from their families, so they wrest it away from the sandman.

Right on schedule, Tom Bethell walks in. Five minutes in the shampoo bowl, and then he's in Ray's chair. Snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip, snip . Ten minutes and done. A writer and researcher, he likes to beat the sharp-elbow crowd, he jokes.

Melanie Edell has just walked through the door. She's cool-blond-professional, suit-and-scarf chic. Except her bangs, which she thinks look a little raggedy and will not do. She's an executive assistant in Fairfax, and the big boss is coming in today. Claery stands close and clips her quick, all neat and trim. Thanks, Ray, she sings, warm blond, cool bangs, rushing out.

By the time the first light of morning finally reaches the second floor of the salon, Claery is busy brushing color over foiled sections of hair. He skillfully divides highlights from lowlights, while joking with client Gay Ohlrich that he's almost ready to switch political parties.

"About time!" says Ohlrich, a pediatric nursing manager ready for work in her navy scrubs, thumbing through a magazine. In the cocoon of early dawn, their easy banter has the feel of ritual.

It's 6:45 in the morning and Ohlrich is his third client of the day.

It's this town, says Claery, populated by Type A's. They work, they've got meetings, or they're high-intensity moms with carpools and toddler activity schedules to keep. In a day that can turn on finding good parking and hitting that sweet spot in traffic, every minute counts.

"It was just a natural progression with clients coming earlier and earlier," says Claery, who once started his styling day at 8 a.m. "Actually if I wanted to, I could get clients if I start at 5." That would be fine, he says. He's got a life, too -- racing cars on weekends or going to his beach house. "The big commodity is time."

The leisurely Tuesday-through-Saturday 9-to-6 salon schedule is becoming a thing of the past, beauty industry experts say. Driven by the culture's longer hours and longer commutes and an entitled sense that everything can be had for a price, salons and stylists have had to contort around the clock.