Straight up - hair is political. Photo / Getty Images
It seemed the very definition of luxury. Then life happened. By Sarah Daniell.
Looking back, it seems the ultimate in indulgent folly. I had locked on to an idea, one that would soon be diminished by a pandemic and discussions about far more meaningful things. Life and death. Definitely not - WTF - hair.
But things were different then. We were blithe-spirited; making plans for a different future; forecasting whimsical magazine themes like "The Luxury Issue". What's your idea of luxury, we in the Canvas team asked each other: My bed is made each day with freshly laundered 800-count Egyptian cotton sheets; a retreat in Southeast Asia; having your hair washed and blow-dried once a week for four weeks. Defining luxury now elicits different responses: being alive; good health; a big cold bottle of Waikato and a plate of raw oysters; being loved; catching a fish and cooking over fire; standing naked under a solar shower hanging from a tree in the middle of nowhere.
I put my hand up for the hair salon ritual. But I am not the only one. I know this because on day 1, week 1, Tiffany at Dry and Tea told me that many clients (mostly women) routinely get their hair washed and blow-dried once a week. Tiffany is wearing blue nail polish done by Lucy, because this is not just a hair salon. Another Lucy will be doing my hair and she leads me to the chair. There's a card with "signature looks". I ask her for a 70s lion's mane, huge, like Farrah Fawcett (not on the menu) and she asks me who that is. We settle on "Rio Carnival", which resembles nothing of Rio or a carnival.
The signature looks are all photographs of white women with long hair. Like me. It's a formula - and clearly a successful one - but not one that is representative of any culture and diversity.
Until the 1920s, long hair was a statement of femininity. But it was men, husbands, not the holder of the hair who held the power. To cut your hair then would have been a radical statement. Then, entered the Bloomsbury Set, with the bob and - according to Vidal Sassoon, quoted in Vogue magazine - women no longer had to endure the laborious weekly wash-dry-set but totally freestyle it with the wash-and-wear chop. In F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story Bernice Bobs Her Hair, the bob is critical to the social success of his heroine. In the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young song, Almost Cut My Hair, the act is a metaphor for rebellion against short-back-and-sides and the Vietnam War.
When I moved to Auckland 15 years ago, I went to a salon and was charged $190 for a cut and colour. These days, you're looking at close to $350. Whatever, you will pay more if you are a woman. For a wash and blow dry, the going rate is around $50.
Back then, I wrote about the strands of history and politics flowing through hair. In the 15th century, bleach was made from onion skins or saffron. The Romans were fans of regular cut-and-preen sessions. During the French Revolution, aristocrats lost their hair to jailers and their heads to the guillotine and sparked a fashion trend for short hair.
Political leaders will be victorious or defeated, entirely depending on their hair. But let's not go down the Orange path, when that is so close to being "hairstory", the remnants of which will fall to the floor like sad old dry chopped ends, to be swept into the garbage.
Say "hair" and it's a blunt cut right across gender politics, politics, race, emotion. Hair hangs heavy with statements and hair can break also the internet. Cultural appropriation (Kylie Jenner and cornrows), Afro (Angela Davis), punk, curls and climate change. Vivienne Westwood shaved off hers to make a point about the latter. In the US, in 2019, a law was introduced banning racial discrimination based on hair and 16-year-old twins in Melbourne, who were born in South Sudan, were sent home and told to pull out their braids or not bother coming back to school. To even show your hair has dire implications in some cultures. In 2019 three Iranian women were sentenced to 55 years in jail for protesting the forced wearing of veils.
There are rules around my hair assignment: not wearing my spectacles for the duration, because it's confronting to sit in front of a mirror for that long; not telling anyone at work what I am doing because I want to see if they notice. Eventually one colleague clocks it and says, "F***, now you look amazing and before you looked ... " catching herself before trailing off. Each appointment is no longer than 40 minutes, in and out.
Week two, I ask Paige for a Jane Birkin. Again, not on the menu, so I get out my phone and google "jane birkin hair" and pull up photos of her from the 60s, with bangs, wearing a leather jacket and straddling a motorbike in Paris. Paige looks at me, looks at the photos and frowns.
"Just get me as close as possible," I say. Paige says, "I'm just getting a detangler to go through your ends."
Week three, it's pissing down outside. I am pale from lack of sleep and have bags under my eyes. My finger hovers over the signature looks and I point to "New York femme" but she actually looks more like a North Shore teenager at Northern Base. Lucy washes my hair, massages in a treatment, wraps it up and I recline, nearly falling asleep. She guides me to the chair and starts to blow dry my hair, vigorously corralling sections of my hair. She is the rhythmic gymnast and my hair, her ribbons - pulling, curling, heating, twisting, twirling my hair to her will with athleticism.
Week four, and I have done all the looks except "Milan", Braid Envy Passion, Braid Envy Spirit.
My final day is cocktail Friday. I arrive at 2pm and I order a mojito. Paige guides me to the basin. I say, "Just do whatever you want." Paige is a Svengali, who can effortlessly transform me from bedraggled to glamorous in a flick of her straightening irons. And it's not so much about how I am looking, though vastly improved apparently, but how I feel when I leave that chair.
But one of the real highlights (intended) of this experience has been observing other clients. Most people sit quietly, looking at their phones, not talking or looking around at all.
But there is a young woman seated in the makeup chair. She describes the brief to the makeup artist: "I want it to be intense, yeah? I want it to be 'now' and natural but I want it to last the night, but I don't want it to be, like, 'boom'."
She seems to sum up not just the superficial desires for us all, but a sort of life philosophy, or a New Year's relationship resolution: Intense and bold; "now" but natural; lasts the distance; but not too explosive or "boom". Mostly I love that she ignored all the signature looks and went straight to the essence of herself.
It is a luxury, yes, to have one's hair washed and blow-dried once a week but it's also the continuation of an ancient ritual of grooming, gathering, conversation, and drinking tea. And finding yourself at the end of four weeks, restored.
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