TEACHING HAIRDOS AND DO NOTS.

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

TOPANGA - Michael O'Rourke grins broadly as "We Are The Champions" blares through the placid canyon air. The revolution - and the Institute of Courage - are coming.

In front of him, workers tote lumber and lay down mortar. The fireplace blazes, the gothic candles light up the richly plastered walls. This building is his dream, the culmination of years of work and thousands of blow-dries, spiked-dos and dye jobs.

At its antique tables, above its marbled floors, the manic South African plans to do nothing short of making the world a better place: through hair dressing.

"This industry has been very good to me; I've made an absolute fortune," said the chairman of Chatsworth-based Sexy Hair Concepts and founder of this striking new hair academy with the wild name. "Something like this doesn't make logical sense. I've put millions of dollars into here and I'll never make that back in my lifetime."

Nor does he seem to care - he actually seems enthusiastic about plowing $4 million of his privately held company's capital into a '60s era Topanga Canyon home and carpentry shop to convert it into a state-of-the-art school that looks like something that would count Harry Potter among its students.

He hired a new president and chief executive officer away from L'Oreal just so he could devote more energy to the school. As he bought antique armoires and apothecaries, marble floors and Zen tea gardens, he hid them from his lieutenants, lest they remind him that he'd overspent again.

There is nothing subtle in O'Rourke's life, as one might expect from someone who runs a company that has both Sexy and Hair in the name. With a platinum blond soul patch beneath his lip and an oversized fisherman's cap hiding his spiky hair, he's always impeccably dressed, blending styles that range from vampire superhero, slick businessman to member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He favors bold pronouncements, equating a trip to the salon with a trip to a psychologist's office.

When it came time to name his lifelong dream, where he'll teach the art of trimming locks, interacting with a client and designing a salon, there was no doubt that he'd give it such a flamboyant moniker.

"It's not an institute of hair, it's an institute of courage," said Donna Federici, Sexy Hair's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "Hairdressers are artists, not businesspeople. He wants them to have what he has, so they can learn what it took to get where he did: courage."

O'Rourke grew up poor, raised in a convent in Zululand. He won national hairstyling competitions in the '60s and opened a thriving chain of salons in his homeland. He longed to come to America to ply his trade, stashing away $5,000 that he could bring in during the business embargo of the Apartheid era and showing up in 1978.

With that few thousand dollars, he bought a rundown salon in Beverly Hills and hoped for the best. In the early days, he'd cut hair for free, working just for tips and word of mouth.

"When I bought it, I could see the guy run out in the street and yell: thank God I found this idiot from Africa who bought this damn thing," he recalled.

So he made a name for himself doing the hairstyles of the era, the Farrah, the Dorothy. No one, Federici said, could do a blow-dried Farrah like O'Rourke.

After building a second successful chain of salons, he jumped into the other side of the business, starting Sexy Hair Concepts in 1998. Within five years, he was reporting retail sales over $120 million, posting an annual growth rate of over 70 percent.

But to him, the business was secondary to the art, the culture, the people of hairdressing. So when he had the money and the time, he decided to launch the institute.

"To work with him is a designer's dream," said Elaine Culotti, who is charged with filling the school with lavish antiques. "You don't have to sell your idea to convince him of anything."

O'Rourke didn't want this to be an ordinary hairstyling school. Twenty-four students at a time will pay $1,000 apiece for the three-day courses. Limousines bring them from their hotel, they eat en masse at the vast banquet table and retire to the tea garden at the day's end to relax and philosophize on what they've learned.

They don't just learn how to hold a pair of scissors, they study the tai chi of how to let energy flow through them as they style locks. For artistic inspiration, they'll visit the Getty Center.

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Michael O'Rourke, whose Chatsworth-based Sexy Hair Concepts has made him ``an absolute fortune,'' is passing on his hair knowledge to others with a school where he will teach aspiring hairdressers. He calls it the Institute of Courage.

(2 -- color) Topanga Creek runs by the house Michael O'Rourke is renovating for his Institute of Courage.

(3 -- color) Michael O'Rourke is renovating a house in Topanga Canyon for a hair academy where he will teach aspiring hairdressers.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer