Marilyn Monroe

 

At Salon Roi

This 1979 Mural portrait entitled Marilyn  by John Bailey is located at 2606 Calvert  Street at Salon Roi.

This 30 foot by 40 foot Mural of Marilyn Monroe looks out over the busy corner of Calvert Street and Connecticut Avenue. It was originally painted by John Bailey at the behest of Charles Stinson as a 40th birthday present for his business partner Roi Bernard.  Stinson and Bernard founded DC's first unisex salon (called Charles the First) in the building on the walls of which the mural is painted in 1969. Roi Bernard bought Stinson out in 1980 and renamed it Salon Roi. Bernard sold the Salon Roi to Daiva Kasteckaite in 2007, but continues to work there.

In 2015, Roi Barnard posed with a picture of his younger self at Salon Roi.

But Marilyn is the main attraction at Salon Roi.

Her picture is everywhere:

This appears to be the Marilyn portrait after which the mural is fashioned.

“Marilyn dreams of Roi,..  Everyday!”

Roi told John Kelly of the Washington Post that he see's his own pain in Marilyn's eyes.

“When I saw Marilyn for the first time on screen, I just went, ‘Whoa, you’re not happy either,’ ” said Roi, the District hairdresser who helped commission the famed mural in 1981. “And I saw it in her eyes.” -- Roi Barnard in  The Post, Feb. 4, 2019.

In this photo Roi shows off a pointillist  painting of the mural at Connecticut Avenue and Calvert Street.

“You can learn how to do hair, but you can’t learn how to do people,” Roi said, pointing to his heart. “It has to be in here.”