Fashion students offer up free hugs

What could Costa Mesa’s Paul Mitchell fashion school have done to warrant 150 of its characteristically black-clad students standing outside its building holding signs and banners? What could they be protesting?

Those thoughts must have crossed at least a few motorists’ minds on their morning commute Wednesday as they passed by the spectacle on Adams Avenue — at least until they got closer to the building and noticed the students were smiling and the banners they held read “Free Hugs.”

“If you don’t get three hugs a day, you can’t be sane,” said faculty member Janet Payne, who was still on an adrenaline-fueled hugging rampage.

The ebullient motivational coach was so excited about the event that it was hard to get a word in edgewise between repeated bear hugs and rapid-fire banter. The hug statistic she quoted wasn’t from a university study but from a book written by the academy’s founder, Winn Claybaugh.

Honors student Jacob Cedeño picked up the idea and ran with it earlier in the week, spending a couple of days spray-painting signs.

“We talked about it and never followed through with it, but over the weekend I decided we should do it,” Cedeño said.

He and all of his fellow students and faculty members cleared the halls, more or less spontaneously, and stood in the school’s parking lot for more than an hour, all donning the school’s distinctive uniform: a solid black shirt and solid black pants.

Some passersby were a little skittish and didn’t take the black-clad mob up on its offer, but many got out of their cars.

“If they didn’t stop they honked,” said teacher Jamie McClary.

“A lot of people were apprehensive at first, like, ‘You’re crazy,’ ” Cedeño said.

The impromptu celebration was the first of its kind at the hair and makeup academy, but the organizers were so happy with the turnout that they want to make it a monthly ritual.

ALAN BLANK may be reached at (714) 966-4623 or at alan.blank@latimes.com.