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Don't know about hairdressers,,but back un the 50s i recall my Mam and all her sisters doing each others hair,,and the smell of Prom"" awful it was,,any of you ladies remember it? 

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Well, long shots pay off sometimes...and this one did, I'm delighted to say.   Olive's mother, Harriet, generally  answered the door when my mother rang the doorbell. The front door opened o

Still on the subject of hairdressing.  A couple of weeks ago I drifted back to my hairdressing days and changed hair colour.  

Hi Jill Sparrow Its nice to see some give hairdresser's a kind word , like Nonna i did a 3 year apprenticeship which my mum and dad borrowed £75 for my indentures. The last perming machine used i

3 hours ago, benjamin1945 said:

Don't know about hairdressers,,but back un the 50s i recall my Mam and all her sisters doing each others hair,,and the smell of Prom"" awful it was,,any of you ladies remember it? 

 

I used to cut and perm my mum's hair when she got too old to manage it herself.  Yes, I remember the smell of the perming lotion.... my dad used to hate it, but I quite liked it!

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Mary I remember all those things and also marcel waving. I had to learn it as we had several old ladies who wouldn't have anything else. My boss and her sisters were all champion s in marcel waving and the comps that were popular then so I had a good teacher.

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Hi nonnaB  talking of the Marcel waving machine. not sure if it's still there but "Wella"s Factory/Warehouse/shop in Basingstoke  still have the machine that they developed, it's in Wella's museum, last time i went was in the early 70s, so it might have closed,   (ps when you go to a place you have not been to for a while all you find is new houses and the place you want has gone)

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On 7/3/2019 at 12:08 PM, MargieH said:

 

I used to cut and perm my mum's hair when she got too old to manage it herself.  Yes, I remember the smell of the perming lotion.... my dad used to hate it, but I quite liked it!

Don't forget the Twink perm.     For the twink perm you dud not use neutralizer to set you curl,  you left it for 15mins then just rinsed the hair with water,  this was like what the hairdressers would call a "Pin Perm"  but for it to take you had to have your hair cut very short, as it was mostly done with full head of pin curls.

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Mary, Marcel waving was done with Marcel waving irons which were heated on a long type of gas tube. (Think when we started out it was a thing of the past but odd hairdressers still used them.) When you thought they were ready to use you brought them up towards your face, taking care they didnt flick up towards your nose, to feel how hot they were and if they were too hot you had to take one side of them and twirl them around to cool them down a bit. A bit like curling tongs nowadays.Then you could start on the client. Firstly producing roller type curls all over the head, dressing it out and following the waves made gradually get the iron into a wave and press the iron into it and turn it over and under it reversing the process.

If my boss was behind with her appointments and I was free, I often had to help her out. One client was awful to deal with. I dont know what she put on her hair or whether she washed it but when the hot irons went anywhere near her hair it stunk to high heaven. My boss came from a long line of hairdressers. Her father was a ladies and gents hairdresser and out of 5 children 4 became top class hairdressers. As I said in an earlier post that they were all trophy winners and won many awards for marcel waving.

I have seen a marcel waving machine I think but cant remember where. Maybe at one of the non qualified hairdressers I went to before leaving school. Apparently the Marcel Waving machine was invented by Marcel after the success of the waving irons. 

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It was, and beware if you started colouring and didn't take a skin test. Then don't mix henna with waving solutions. Peroxide burns and the higher the volume the more it stung. Then watch out for the clients that had cysts on their scalps. We had one lady that had one the size of a large egg and as a new apprentice I was terrified of hurting her.

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I remember once going to have my hair done before going to a wedding. I had long hair and wanted to wear a pill box hat with a short net veil. This was in the early 80s and they were very fashionable at the time.

 

Howard Hutchings was brilliant with long hair, so I asked him to do it. While I was under the dryer, I watched him working with an elderly lady. Her hair was so thin and sparse that her scalp was clearly visible. In places, she had no hair at all. By the time he'd finished, she had a beautiful halo of what looked like candy floss around her head. It amazed me to see how he did it!

 

When my turn came, he had the opposite problem. I got a double French pleat with the hat woven into it. Looked fantastic until I tried to remove the hat after the wedding! He always said I had too much hair!

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Jill , I was left with an impression of an old lady when I first started hairdressing. This lady was very tiny.She sat down and my boss asked me to prepare the colour for her.  She took off her hairpiece and I saw she hardly had any hair. My boss promptly started applying the colour to her regrowth that you could hardly see. I had to finally wash the colour off . It was strange washing her scalp more than her hair. Her hair was then set in rollers and under the dryer she went. Hair was dressed out and finally the hairpiece was put back in place frizzing out little wisps of hair around her face so it masked the line of the false piece. The effect wasnt really wonderful but this little old lady was always pleased with the result.

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8 hours ago, nonnaB said:

Mary, Marcel waving was done with Marcel waving irons which were heated on a long type of gas tube. (Think when we started out it was a thing of the past but odd hairdressers still used them.) When you thought they were ready to use you brought them up towards your face, taking care they didnt flick up towards your nose, to feel how hot they were and if they were too hot you had to take one side of them and twirl them around to cool them down a bit. A bit like curling tongs nowadays.Then you could start on the client. Firstly producing roller type curls all over the head, dressing it out and following the waves made gradually get the iron into a wave and press the iron into it and turn it over and under it reversing the process.

If my boss was behind with her appointments and I was free, I often had to help her out. One client was awful to deal with. I dont know what she put on her hair or whether she washed it but when the hot irons went anywhere near her hair it stunk to high heaven. My boss came from a long line of hairdressers. Her father was a ladies and gents hairdresser and out of 5 children 4 became top class hairdressers. As I said in an earlier post that they were all trophy winners and won many awards for marcel waving.

I have seen a marcel waving machine I think but cant remember where. Maybe at one of the non qualified hairdressers I went to before leaving school. Apparently the Marcel Waving machine was invented by Marcel after the success of the waving irons. 

Yes sorry nonna B getting a bit mixed up the machine that i ment was first patented by Nestle that was the chandelier type this was in 1909. At first only the front hair was permed then eventually the whole head was permed in sections it would take 10 hours to complete. Marcel waving or known as the iron wave , the crimp wave whereby the indentation was made in the hair by a heated iron. The single iron induced people to invent the double and treble crimp iron.

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