Hair for the belle of the ball

Press, 26 July 1986, Page 14

Hair for the belle of the ball

What was meant an an exercise in nostalgia heralding a return of the romantic evening styles of the sixties has turned out to be a no-no.

It was the modest spate of balls held recently in and around Christchurch that prompted the quest in the first place. But old timers in hairdressing who backcombed their way through those exciting times say... "No, it ain’t nothing like the sixties.”

Back in the sixties, the ball season was the bread and butter of winter hairdressing, recalls the president of the CanterburyWestland Ladies Hairdressing Association, Lois Ray.

Hairdressers knew the Christchurch social calendar better than they knew the colour charts. Going to a ball definitely involved a visit to the hairdresser, and clients had to book six or eight weeks in advance before the big balls.

Large salons might have 20 or 30 clients going to the same ball. Hairdressers really had to tax their ingenuity to en-

sure that they all looked different

And the hairdressers’ ball was the biggest of them all. Lois recalls their last ball was held in Cowles Stadium, and attended by 700 people. It had outgrown the Winter Garden and eventually it had to be abandoned because Christchurch did not have a venue that was big enough for it. Last year the Canter-bury-Westland Hairdressers’ Association attempted to resurrect the hairdressers’ ball in the Town Hall.

“While you could not say it was a flop, because the 100 people who attended had a good time, there is no incentive to hold it again this year,” says Lois.

Gala or elaborate evening styles used to be part of the hairdressers’ stock in trade. The industry would welcome a resurgence, if only to keep the young hairdressers in training for the World Cup.

New Zealand always sends a team to the World Cup, a biennial event which passes for the

Olympics of the hairdressing world.

“When it comes to the world cup hairdressing, gala styles are what it is all about,” Lois points out. Last year the national hairdressing association changed the category in the hairdressing competitions to include a gala style which took the place of what had been a commercial evening style. “A commercial evening style,” explains Lois, “means a bit fancier than a day style, but something that can still be worn on the streets. Gala calls for something much more elaborate.”

But the response, in Canterbury at least, was most disappointing. The category attracted very few entries compared with the other sections, and the standard was not up to major competition work. No certificates were awarded.

Lois puts this down to young hairdressers having no experience of this type of work. Today, they don’t master rollers, and roller setting is still the best way to get volume and control for gala work. '

Glennys Mann, a contemporary. of Lois Ray, owns and operates Smile Salon with her husband Peter. She says these days you are hard pressed to find a long formal or an “up” style even in the hairdressing magazines. Hair today is short, short, short and the few women who do go to balls elect to take a bit more trouble with their day style.

If there is a return to more femininity and romance in hairdressing — and there is only a trickle, not a flood — then the young are leading the way.

Glennys Mann says some school girls have come in to have their hair up for their formal dances, and Ellen Kerr, who is on the committee of the Canterbury Westland Hairdressers’ Association, says her 16-year-old son has worn a dinner suit twice this winter. Both times for school dances, and he even asked for a pair of white gloves! ' Still it’s a far cry from the sixties when hair was backcombed into fantastic

styles held up with half a kilo of hair clips, glued in place with strong lacquer, and then topped off with artists’ glitter every day of the week.

Today, a busy salon might go through a season without doing a formal evening style. In the sixties, they might do 50 in a day.

Peter Mann is now preparing his model, Charlotte Holt, for the gala section of the South Canterbury Hairdressing competitions next week. Charlotte sits patiently while he roller sets and

then backcombs her hair. The whole process — washing, drying, backcombing — takes two hours.

She likes the style, but has it brushed out before she goes out into the street.

A very pretty young woman of 23, she has never had such a fancy hairstyle in her life. She would like, for a change, to wear her hair in a formal style but asks... “Where would I go looking like this?” Without the ball season,

there is really nowhere because the heyday of fancy evening styles and formal balls were one and the same. You know that when you hear the old timers in hairdressing reminisce. They, who have all those old skills at the ready which they are seldom called upon to use, say things like...

“Remember the nurses’ ba11... and the printers’ ba11... and the fishmongers’ ba11... that was a beauty... and the butchers’ ba11...” Ah, those were the days, my friend!