Beauty and the beasts of time When Anne-Marie de Spa set up as a beautician in 1964, she made her own products using fruit and veges. Now you can go to the pharmacy for Botox, writes Cecile Meier.
When Anne-Marie de Spa set up as a beautician from her parents’ Christchurch home in 1964, there were so few salon products on the market she had to make her own with whatever was in the fridge.
Cucumber, tomatoes, lemon and kaolin powder were key ingredients.
De Spa had studied to be a beautician in Belgium, where her family is from, for two years.
Unaware of the stringent import restrictions of the time, she ‘‘naively’’ brought back a large trunk full of cosmetics and equipment.
Customs ‘‘were very kind and let me keep it for this one time’’ but after that, she had to make do with what was available in New Zealand.
She was one of a few beauty therapists in the country at the time, most of whom were in Auckland.
‘‘I was rather isolated down South and, at times, I felt like I was doing it on my own,’’ she says, her French accent still strong, despite having lived here for most of her life.
She felt people did not take her seriously as a baby-faced 20-year-old, so she drew a few wrinkles on her face with makeup and asked her hairdresser for a few grey hairs.
De Spa set up her first proper salon in 1966 near Christchurch airport – she moved her practice out of her parents’ house from where she was not allowed to advertise.
In 1971, she returned to Belgium to attend an international cosmetology conference and shared her struggles to access quality products with the owner of a Swiss brand, Lydia Dainow.
Dainow agreed to sell de Spa a decomposed version of her products in two phases: oil and water, which allowed de Spa to get more volume within her $200 annual import licence. decades. ‘‘Some of my clients would have shared secrets no one else knew. I’m a bit like the village priest,’’ she says.
She says a beautician’s most important tool is their hands.
‘‘People need today, more than ever, a gentle reassuring touch. I don’t like the word pampered but they want to feel, you could almost say, loved. Cared for.’’