Gossip and a good ‘set’: When visiting the hair salon was an event

It was a chance to change your look, try something new, and refresh a perm, get your hair ‘set’ or put a cap on and get some streams for frosting. But visiting the hair salon in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s was about a lot more than that.

The local hairdressers would usually know all the gossip, having met regular clients as often as once a week week to catch up on their family life and time away. It meant nothing remained private for long – but it all made the experience that bit more personal and fun.

But just as styles have changed over recent years, so has the practice of visiting a hair salon. Home dye kits look much more professional, curling at home no longer means you need any skill with a set of rollers and wash-and-wear hairstyles are much more popular – meaning that visits to a professional are only made once every couple of months, if that.

But you’ll no doubt remember making fixed appointment in the diary for a visit to the hair salon, and coming home looking a million dollars, as well as with the knowledge of not just the hairdresser’s first name but likely their whole life story as well as that of plenty of other customers.

A hugely popular style in the ’50s and early ’60s was soft curls or tight curls, depending on your taste, with the hair gradually getting longer – but just as curly – as fashions evolved in the later ’60s and ’70s.

Then, from the ’70s, colour became a huge part of the salon visit. Curls and, later, colours would set under dome-like dryers for hours, and a visit was not reserved for once every 12 weeks like it is today. For hours women would wait for the plastic rollers, bobby pins and the warm air of an overhead, rigid-hood hair dryer to do their magic in setting curls and colour into place, and many would go weekly or at the longest, monthly, before making another visit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfFvJVRcVaE

Sitting at the dryer was a time for catching up with the gossip with neighbours and friends, and the only danger, apart from someone’s ears burning, was that you’d sustain a scalp burn yourself from the perming solution or bleach.

It wasn’t until the ’50s that women had access to home hairdryers to help set their styles in between visits to the salon, and it was far from the handheld device of today. 

https://youtu.be/i3p1CoOLiX8

The bonnet dryer worked by having the dryer, usually in a small portable vanity case, connected to a tube that went into a bonnet not dissimilar to a more sturdy shower cap. The dryer worked by giving an even amount of heat to the whole head at once, but much more slowly than the dryers of today.

Do you miss the salons of old or are you happy about the advent of no-fuss hairdos?