Hairdresser failed to cut it when the long-hair craze ruled

“LET’S face it,” said the managing director, one AB Goodall. “The average young man in the street hasn’t had a haircut recently”.

Mr Goodall was speaking to our sister paper, the Evening Times, in February 1971. He knew what he was talking about. Long hair was very much the fashion – or on-trend, to use the obligatory expression that we use today – at that time. Male rock stars of the era probably influenced this look, with their shoulder-length hair. The headline above Mr Goodall’s lamentwas“Beatenbyratesand long hair ...”’; the Buchanan Street hairdressers he ran, Stewart’s, at number 78, was closing down, in the face of soaring rates and high overheads.

Forty-five people, including hairdressers and office and canteen staff, were to lose their jobs in a closure scheduled for March 20.

“It’s so expensive to conduct a business in the centre of the city that hairdressing just can’t pay,” the MD added. “There has been a decline in the demand for hairdressing by young men and women ... It’s just fashion”, he said of the young men who were strangers to Stewart’s. “And the young women too now prefer long straight hair.”

The shop unit is today occupied by Lush cosmetics.

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