There were two of us in the phonebox on Cricklewood Broadway that sunny Monday afternoon. We were both assistants at John Frieda at the time, both with the same idea about where we wanted to be – on set. We were skint and shared the rent for a room in a flat above our landlord’s afro salon. £45 each/week, mostly paid for from our tips. If my rent fell behind, I’d make it up washing out relaxers for her on Sundays.
I’d heard the name Streeter’s on set enough times by that point so summoned up the courage to find the agency’s number in the good ol’ Yellow Pages. Beverley (Streeter) had helped Eugene Souleiman get where he was. If you wanted to work in fashion as a hairdresser, hers was the number. We both knew it…
I put in the 50p and called.
Tentatively I asked how we could go about assisting something along the lines of:
“Hi, we’re assistants at John Frieda and we want to work in fashion, ideally assisting Eugene…”
That sounds pretty audacious when I see it in writing like that, but in the moment it felt perfectly normal.
“Can you come to the office in Farringdon next Monday?”
As Korean was his first language, I’d been doing the talking, we’d been sharing the earpiece until that point. I turned to him and raised a questioning eyebrow. He looked panicky, but there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind. I went alone.
Beverley put me directly in touch with Eugene who invited me over to his place later that week. He cooked me a simple delicious dinner, steamed new potatoes, peas and carrots in minty butter with milk poached fish. Over a couple of beers we talked about what I thought of the training at Toni & Guy and John Frieda, what assisting experience I’d had and why I wanted to work in fashion.
The hospitality, the attention, the respect and kindness with which Eugene treated me is as fresh in my mind today as it was then. It was one of the most memorable and life changing exchanges I’ve ever had looking back it almost feels like some surreal dream.
Plocacosmos, or the Whole Art of Hair Dressing. James Stewart. London, 1784. Quite hard to read: S’s are F’s. Surprising sections on childcare. Worth the effort.
I wasn’t looking for Plocacosmos specifically, I’d just seen it referenced in the back of other books. One reference led to another and eventually I got hold of it at the British Library. They gave me a special pillow for it and explained how to turn the fragile pages and hold them open with a pair of book thongs, I was scared to turn each page. Each letter of typeface was indented into the page, the long S’s that read as F’s wreaked havoc with my dyslexia. I had to slow down to the point I could hardly understand it. Re-reading every sentence I knew there was no way I’d get through all 500 pages. But that was no longer the point. I just wanted to be there with this thing.
The BL had just moved to its new location in King’s Cross, the staff were considerably less helpful than at the National Art Library. They were very particular about who they wanted registering for one of their library cards, and it seemed hairdressers didn’t fit the bill. Even telling them I’d been the school librarian didn’t shift their attitude.
With Plocacosmos in my hands I felt like a time traveller. The magnitude of the career I’d landed myself in started to dawn on me. People have been taking this way more seriously for way longer than I’d appreciated. Writing huge books about it centuries ago people had considered hairdressing worth recording in detail and passing on. How long has this been going on I wondered. It still amazes me now when I think about it, but then it was a revelation. Hair, the first 5,000 years. I remember finding that title in the long skinny drawers of the index card cabinets. Little did I know that a few years later my good friend Suisse Marocain would give me a copy of my own from the arcane Bibliothèque Igor Balut.
I had begun my first apprenticeship at Toni & Guy in Guildford where I met Gareth Van Cuylenburg. Tim, the salon owner had told me about session work as a potential career path at the interview, I was smitten.
Gareth had recently moved to the UK from Australia. Living in London, Gareth commuted to Guildford three or four days a week, the rest of the time he did session work and whenever we okayed it with Tim, I’d skip the salon to go and assist.
Gareth told me about the Victoria & Albert museum, I explored it extensively. One day I reciprocated his tip-off by telling him I’d discovered the National Art Library was within. The library was free but the museum was not, so I joined as a friend. This was before national museums were free to the public. I kept my membership even when it became free. The friends room was smaller than an office but bigger than a cupboard. It wasn’t clear exactly where it ended and the other offices began. There was an honesty fishbowl full of small change and a drip jug of filter coffee constantly simmering on its hotplate. Thin plastic cups offered no insulation. You had to hold your coffee by the rim smoking was permitted only by the window. Each time they upgrade the members lounge my memory of that room gets more and more nostalgic.
I spent a lot of time at the V&A. It became a sanctuary for me. During the pollinated summers I’d seek respite in the dense cool humidity of the tapestry gallery among the unicorns and hunt scenes.
In the National Art Library I’d ask librarians for books on hair. They seemed slightly surprised by my requests and my presence there, like they were wondering how I found out about the NAL. I guess I didn’t look or behave like your standard library bookworm, none-the-less they were very helpful.
These experiences really changed how I viewed hairdressing, it gave me a sense that this was a real job, a valid career choice, with a heritage which I myself was stepping into.
If you need a companion to brave the wardens of The British Library, get in touch and we can get you a readers pass. They’re much less exclusive these days. It’s also a lot easier to read it on archive.org.
