Michael Tullio recalls the 1992 vision like it came to him yesterday. Then 34, the Detroit-born hairdresser had been working for Susie Hopley’s La Femme salon in Aspen for 10 years, building clientele. “I kept looking through the window, at another upstairs window at 516 East Hyman [across from Little Annie’s Eating House, now Clark’s Oyster Bar]. It had lots of windows overlooking the mountain. I thought, that would be the most ideal ‘New York’ Aspen location. It’s now or never.”

Opened with just one other stylist and his soon-to-be wife, Shelley, as manager, Salon Tullio “became Aspen’s first large-capacity salon with eight chairs, right out of the gate,” says the rock-and-roll style icon known simply by his last name. He added two skincare rooms, four manicurists, and stayed there 11 years. Over the next two decades—a 14-year stint in a charming Victorian on Main Street, where the Tullios raised two children and, since 2017, upstairs in the Aspen Grove Mall building on Cooper Avenue—Salon Tullio has beautified folks from around the globe.

“What’s super cool for us, as hairdressers and creative beings, is to see the different influences from major cities and countries—LA, New York, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Australia—that blend together in Aspen,” Tullio shares. “My artistic creativity has evolved because I’m working with a live medium. Color is painting, cutting is sculpture. It’s live performance art, girl!”

Counting 15 chairs and a dozen-plus hairdressers on the roster (including Jeff Novak, former owner of Lather Salon) and recently expanded by 520 square feet to add a spa room (for scalp-stimulating hair-growth treatments and facials) and wellness boutique, Salon Tullio remains one of the busiest in town, averaging 85 clients daily in winter and summer.

Yet Tullio is uninterested in fame. “Michael doesn’t want to be too big and have salons around the world because he’s very hands-on,” says Shelley, a former massage therapist who also runs Salon Tullio Basalt, opened in 2008. “He’s the guy that people want to see.”

Daughter Sophia, 28, joined the family business in back-end management, product sourcing, and R+D in 2020. (Son son Gianni Tullio Giordano, 24, a California photographer and filmmaker, shot the Paris Fashion Week portraiture that decorates the salon.)

Devoted to nontoxic beauty products due to her health struggles, Sophia recently helped Salon Tullio reformulate its 20-year-old line of creamsicle-scented shampoos and conditioners without sulfates and parabens. In December, Sophia and business partner Sarah Chiles (Salon Tullio’s financial advisor) will unveil Amun Organics, a six-product collection of regenerative hair and skincare products formulated with natural ingredients favored by ancient civilizations: grass-fed organic beef tallow, mushrooms, and Indian gooseberry. This is her legacy. But what’s his?

“I always hear my parents talking about the one thing that makes them so happy: seeing people leave [here] with joy,” Sophia says, “to [see that they] feel something more than they did when they walked in the door. That makes the salon go round.”

As the salon’s namesake puts it: “Hair is the number one accessory because it’s the first thing you see. A hairdo today doesn’t end tomorrow morning. It lasts until you come back in six to eight weeks—longer than a great meal.”