Best of Boston

When the avant-garde salons of Newbury Street mistake overzealousness for creativity, only one man can come to the rescue: Antonio Vitale. You won’t find posh ambiance here; Vitale revels in his tiny Kenmore Square studio’s perfunctory décor and pretense-free atmosphere. Instead, come for careful, thoughtfully rendered hair coloring. The 29-year-old sixth-generation stylist started working with hair at 11 in his father’s studio and came back to it after years of toiling as an artist. That’s exactly what he still is—an artist layering subtle shades of color to tone down or brighten in all the right spots, fixing what has been put asunder and putting his clients at ease through every step of the process.