To passers-by, Crops for Girls, a salon on East Ninth Street, resembles any of the dozens of chic beauty parlors in the neighborhood. The paint is rosy and bright, the mirrors are gilded and portraits of starlets dot the walls. But look closer and a subtle theme emerges. Each of those women — Audrey Hepburn, Louise Brooks, Jean Seberg — has short hair.

Since 1992, Michael D’Amico has made a business out of chopping off women’s hair, dealing exclusively in above-the-shoulder styles. Bobs, pageboys, asymmetrical razor cuts — they are his specialty. If the salon had a motto, it might be “No men, no ponytails, no exceptions.”

Mr. D’Amico, 50, was a beauty school student in Manhattan in the 1980s. Women on the streets — this was the heyday of new wave and punk — didn’t look like the girls back in Jersey City, where he grew up. “I would see girls walking around with buzz cuts and other cropped, funky hair,” he recalled. Hoping to avoid a career giving ho-hum trims, he decided to narrow his focus. “There are only so many styles you can do with long hair, and I like the challenge of working with people who are making a big change,” he said.

Take Maria Pinero, 38, who found Crops for Girls while searching online for “best shops for short cuts” in New York City. For ages, Ms. Pinero had been wearing her hair anywhere from the middle of her back to her waist; she was ready, if a little anxious, for something different.