A cut, a chat and a shoulder to dry on
As record numbers close, Jan Masters recalls the soul-soothing sanctuary of the old-school salon
Booked any nice holidays? Are you watching Strictly? Where are you spending Christmas? Textbook fodder for hairdresser convos. But as I’ve been visiting my colourist for aeons, she gives me a hug, settles me in the same seat and asks how I’m feeling – like, really feeling; if I’m coping with freelance work as well as managing my anxiety (a longstanding utter bugger of an affliction).
It’s a two-way street. I’ll ask after her dad because he’s had health issues, and how her kids are doing at school. Then the general manager will swing by. Next, a couple of juniors (who are no longer juniors) will come to say ‘Hi’ too.
It’s a bit like Cheers, when the bar staff used to shout ‘Norm’ every time Mr Peterson walked in.
None of these lovely people is my mate. I’ve never seen one of them outside the salon, that neutral territory of busyness, buzziness and backwashes.
But as soon as I pass through those doors, mentally, I hang a sign on my inbox that says ‘Gone to the bleach’.
Somehow the place feels sheltered from outside forces (maybe it’s all that tinfoil on my head). I know that brightening my hair will make me look less drawn, and when I leave, somewhat childishly, I’ll hum that 1990s American TV ad – ‘Like you’ve just stepped out of a salon’.
Except now, clients are stepping out of a variety of hairdressing venues, from souped-up garden sheds to trendy vintage trailers, while others have embraced a WFH approach (whether that’s your home or theirs). Indeed, dozens of traditional salons are closing by the month due to several factors, including the pandemic, skyhigh energy costs and customers going easy during the cost-ofliving crisis.
I get it. And I get that mobile hairdressing is now a serious cut above the outdated cliché of a low-rent option. But I hope those bricks-and-mortar salons that have been wobbling can weather this rough patch. Some positive news from the National Hair and Beauty Federation is that business survival expectations have now begun to improve since the beginning of the year.
The traditional salon holds a soft spot for me. Partly because my second-ever job was on
Hair magazine, when some of the world’s foremost stylists were becoming stars in their own right – Nicky Clarke, John Frieda,
Charles Worthington, Trevor Sorbie. To a girl from the suburbs, their premises were like palaces: chandeliers, fireplaces, bars, gilt mirrors, pots of orchids and piles of posh mags that never got dog-eared. They were happening hubs of creativity. Hangouts of luxe.
Of course many still are, although it was sad when, due to economic pressures, Clarke pulled the plug on his iconic Mayfair abode. At least his brilliant Birmingham salon is still going strong. Hurrah.
Even before those heady, halcyon days, I fondly remember the hairdressers where I grew up in the 70s. My friend’s mum worked on reception. Most neighbours went there. When I had my first trim, it felt like an initiation into womanhood. I heard proper grown-up chit-chat: shouty whispers about ‘the pill’; a collective melting over John Thaw’s ice-chip eyes in The Sweeney.
The air swirled with the smells of perming solutions and setting lotions. There was usually an apprentice pushing a broom in slo-mo. And the most thrilling of the fixtures and fittings were rows of hooded dryers that baked a billion shampoo-and-sets. It was these that prompted my mum to buy a Ronson Escort 2000, a contraption that you wore over your shoulder like a tote bag, its elephant trunk blowing hot air into a voluminous plastic bonnet. Très chic.
It was in the local salon that you could watch someone’s trial run for a wedding (tendrils featured heavily). You might even hear some bridal banter: how Auntie Vera was constructing a four-tier fruit cake and filling 4,000 mushroom vol-au-vents. It was a place in which you could let off steam, allow troubles to hang loose during a tight perm. It was a bonding experience that had nothing to do with Olaplex.
Cut to today and many of us are still spilling the beans of life to our hairdressers, a confessional relationship conducted purely in the salon chair. Maybe that’s down to their super-honed listening skills. Maybe it’s the power of touch. Maybe it’s because they’re the only people who ever see you in a back-to-front cape. Or perhaps it’s because you’re actually talking to yourself while looking into a mirror, meeting your own eyes as you speak.
When Norm, in a classic
Cheers entrance, was asked, ‘How’s life?’, he replied, ‘Not for the squeamish.’ Ain’t that the truth. Perhaps that’s why I like having highlights in a place where everybody knows my name.
‘It was a place in which you could hang loose during a tight perm’