Jacqueline Farrara didn’t prepare for snow or ice. No one did for that matter. It’s near the end of April and the city is wrapped in a chilling sheet of sleet. We had finally given up on winter and embraced the first sprightly attempts at spring but it snowed last night. Something so bizarre and inappropriate it sparked widespread fury and blew up our twitter feed. When we leave her apartment Jacqueline is wearing a black velvet mini dress under a black blazer with long coat tails and flat sandals. No tights. No socks. No sweater. She’ll bear it, she says, because “it’s only seven blocks to the shop”.

Jacqueline started working at Fellow Barber on Crosby Street just a few days ago. She mans the front desk. She takes the appointments and helps with all the salon duties, except for cutting hair – she was a fashion student, not a beauty major. “It’s such a dude block,” she laughs. “Next door is surf and coffee shop Saturdays and on the other side is Miansai, a men’s jewelry store. It’s gonna be a lot of fun working here this summer!” And I slowly start to see why. The salon is still closed when we arrive but the manager Matt has agreed to open up for us. He’s so handsome I’m oddly distracted. Fifteen minutes later two of the barbers arrive: strong-looking guys with burley beards and the kind of attire you wish your boyfriend wore. And then another guy comes in. And a customer. All of them interesting, cool and simply put, hot. We are soon surrounded by so much testosterone I don’t know if I want to stay or leave.

I met Jacqueline last summer at the Refinery 29 Beach House in Montauk (that time I wrote about the Hamptons guy). She was invited by one of the Friends band members, Nikki Shapiro, who I presumed was her boyfriend. “We never ended up dating and we don’t keep in touch much anymore but that’s what’s funny about living in New York,” she shrugs. I loved her look. She had clear, pale skin, dark hair with thick mod-looking bangs and wore a lot of vintage dresses, albeit all black. But it was mostly her tattoos that intrigued me. Twenty-four to be exact. All perfectly symmetrical and almost mathematically centered. “I am big on placement and balance,” she explains. “I like designing around the space. I’ll have all my joints tattooed sooner or later.”

Back at her Chinatown apartment, nestled in the kitchen with her cat Coca Cola and a piece of cake from the downstairs bakery, she gives me the full ink story: “I got my first when I was eighteen, around my birthday. It was a simple blue and white diamond on my left or right outer wrist. I can’t recall what side, but that started it. I ended up going back for a matching one on the other side two weeks later because I felt unbalanced. My last ones were for my birthday this year. I got both my armpits done out in Ohio with eighteenth century erotic book plates from a book my grandmother used when she was in art school. My legs are all my grandmother’s original artwork. She was from Ukraine and picked up Ukrainian folk art as her major skill set for most of her life as an artist. I have a lot of her work on me. She just passed away in December.”

In her grandmother’s footsteps, Jacqueline continues her artistry in the form of alphabet art and growing her almost obsessive collection of paper, i.e. books, atlases, old maps, scraps etc. But one burning question is still left unanswered: what’s with all the black? There is not a single slice of color in Jacqueline’s closet, not even a button or a cuff. “I started really religiously only doing black outfits after a couple of serious losses years ago,” she says quietly. “And since then it’s sort of been a morbid couple years for me. Sadly death happens and I don’t mind the idea of being able to hear someone say I look ready for a funeral, because seriously I am. There is something very humbling about wearing black all the time. I think more clearly. I think this summer I will try some all white outfits here and there just to lighten up for a little…” What an interesting summer it will be indeed…