There was nowhere you could have gone into to have your hair done in a white salon . . . they could not even comb our hair. And they were so scared of it, they said, “We can’t do your hair,” and often they never tried, and so I had people who used to come, you see the girls now cutting their hair off, that’s just what they resorted to, just cut.
By 1955, a Trinidadian migrant, Carmen England, née Maingot, who later helped set up the Notting Hill Carnival, had opened what is listed in the Hairdressers’ Journal as probably the first black hair salon in Britain.
England’s “straightening salon” was located in salubrious South Kensington in the Royal Borough, and catered to a well-heeled crowd. The emphasis was on straight hair, but England allegedly remained committed to the hot comb (the non-chemical alternative for straightening) because it required more constant upkeep than chemicals and was therefore arguably more lucrative.2
Migration from the Caribbean continued, and with it demand rose, especially for salons that specialized in chemical relaxers. In 1957 another Trinidadian, Winifred Atwell, opened Atwell’s in Railton Road, Brixton, south London, where much of the growing black population was concentrated. When she was growing up, Atwell’s family had owned a pharmacy and she had to follow in the family trade. Yet, in addition to studying pharmacy, Atwell was also a gifted pianist. In 1946 she moved to London, where she had gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music. By the time she opened her salon, she was a celebrity. Atwell was the first black person to sell a million records in Britain, and her stardom was further solidified in 1954 when she became the first black person in the UK to have a number one hit. This she achieved with the twee “Let’s Have Another Party.” It exemplified the type of sanitized, nonthreatening output that white audiences of the day demanded from black performers, and Atwell became a huge star.
The Hairdressers’ Journal covered the opening of the salon, remarking that a huge throng of Winifred’s fans congregated outside in the rain for hours, chanting: “We want Winnie,” while local traffic ground to a halt.3
Atwell’s high-profile performances (the queen and Princess Margaret were among her legions of fans) demanded professional hairdressing. Following one hair-related disaster after another, she decided to open her own salon. Before long, the entrepreneurial Atwell had launched Opus, her own range of hair-straightening products and cosmetics. She even manufactured a range of stockings for those with darker skin. By 1960 Atwell was successful enough to have upgraded from Brixton to the rarefied atmosphere of Mayfair. Her new salon was situated on New Bond Street and counted among its neighbors the famous Vidal Sassoon.4 However, by 1967, as tastes in music changed and her popularity waned, Atwell decided to move to Australia, where she still enjoyed widespread popularity.
Australia had at the time an openly racist immigration policy, so it might seem unusual that a black woman would willingly move there. The Sunday Mirror reported on the news:
Pianist Winifred Atwell has been given permission to settle down in Australia as an immigrant. She has been told this officially in spite of the country’s ‘White Australia’ policy. An Australian immigration official said yesterday that she had been granted residence because she was ‘of good character and had special qualifications.’ Immigration Minister Mr Phillip Lynch said: ‘We will not stand in the way of an international artist of such repute.’5
In the 1950s there was a significant rise in the informal market for black hairstyling, but this was largely in the hands of untrained individuals. When it comes to braiding, in my experience it is those without “formal” hairdressing training who have achieved the most outstanding results. However, when it comes to the application of chemicals, the reverse holds true. By the time I moved to the UK, I had experienced way too many nightmare scenarios of perms applied over kitchen sinks to go anywhere but to the most certified of salons. Back then, people didn’t have the same choices.
Much like the rest of society, the British hairdressing world of the 1950s and ’60s was openly racist. Many salons couldn’t cater to or simply refused to treat black hair. Such decisions were generally justified by the argument that a black clientele might be off-putting to other customers. Salon segregation continued, but as the years progressed, excuses became more coy. Racism was rampant, but its agents were increasingly reluctant to admit it. However, cartoons such as this 1963 beauty from the Hairdressers’ Journal leave one in little doubt of popular attitudes at the time.6
Cartoon, “Don’t Cut Too Near the Bone!,” by A Burman, 1963. (Published in the Hairdressers’ Journal)
The fashion of the 1950s and early ’60s was defined by straightening. Whether straight hair was to be achieved by hot press or chemical straightener, both methods had potentially dire consequences in the hands of untrained professionals. To overcome this knowledge deficiency, in 1958, Roy Lando, a Jamaican man who had trained in the US, set up a salon and training school. Lando offered six-month courses leading to a diploma in hairdressing. The industry continued to expand, and by 1967 the Mamore School of Hairdressing claimed to be the largest in Britain training black hairdressers. The Mamore School further distinguished itself by training both black and white students.7
Until the 1980s there were a good variety of black companies both manufacturing and distributing their own products. Unlike today, the black hair industry in the UK was primarily in black hands. Jamaican-born “Len” Dyke and Dudley Dryden’s Dyke & Dryden was one such successful black British business. However, like all the others, Dyke & Dryden was eventually overwhelmed—in its case by American competitors—and finally sold out to Illinois-based Soft Sheen in the 1990s.
Today, the lucrative black hair business is almost entirely dominated by South Asian men. While the reasons behind this are multiple, one of the biggest cited is retail infrastructure. South Asian businesses were well established and able to transfer their business model to take over the hair-care market. This allowed them to buy in bulk, facilitating a monopolization of the market and effectively driving out competitors.
Aesthetically, until very recently the tyranny of straightness dominated. The expectation was that even the merest suggestion of frizz, the sight of a wave, or, God forbid, a curl, needed to be smoothed out. As recently as the mid-noughties, textured hair still evoked adjectives such as “frizzy” and “wild” and was felt to require the type of taming that most brands—from Shea Moisture, to Mixed Chicks, or indeed MCJW—continue to instruct us to comply with. But until the natural-hair movement, the pressure was almost by default to present a sleek facsimile of whiteness.
As Susan Bordo writes:
Every transformation on [TV shows] The Swan and Extreme Makeover includes a mandatory straightening for the black contestants. Late-night and early-morning infomercials for ceramic wands and miracle straightening lotions feature emotional before-and-afters of both black and white women with tousled and “natural” hairstyles miraculously transformed into sheets of sleek and shine.
What is most incredible about these commercials is the women’s reactions. They weep and speak of miserable lives redeemed, of dreams of beauty realized, of nothing short of deformity corrected, salvation achieved. Having straight hair has achieved a trans-racial beauty status.8