How we fell out of love with the hair 'do'

This isn't the 1960s, when women had more time on their hands to effect the laborious beehives favoured by Brigitte Bardot. Photo / Getty Images

When lockdown ended, most women's first port of call wasn't a pub, restaurant or shopping centre; it was a hairdresser. After months of cack-handedly tending to our own tresses, never had we appreciated their skills more. Appointments were as rare as hen's teeth, while social media was filled with gleeful selfies of women in the chair.

And while all hairdressers are well versed in making their clients feel fabulous, no-one elevated it to such an art form as Nicky Clarke, the celebrity coiffeur who ruled the 1990s and 2000s with a leonine mane that was even more luxuriant than those of his starry clients.

When Clarke says: "I've done the hair of all the major divas of this world," he isn't joking. Over the years, he has styled Elizabeth Taylor, David Bowie, Sharon Stone, Isabella Rossellini, Jerry Hall, Cate Blanchett, Gwyneth Paltrow and Elizabeth Hurley. Clarke spent much of the 1990s flitting between Kensington and Buckingham Palaces, since Princess Diana and the Duchess of York both had him on speed dial.

In his Mayfair salon, so in demand was Clarke that he usually worked on three clients at once – dashing between them – and even then, there was a constant waiting list. That his services cost £650/$1,250 (he was the first celebrity hairdresser to charge a three-figure price tag) was no impediment.

Nicky Clarke: 'I've done the hair of all the major divas of this world. Photo / Getty Images

Which is why it comes as such a surprise that Clarke, 63, has just announced that he is closing his Mayfair salon after 31 years. Pre-pandemic, his business empire was valued at £60 million ($1,25 billion). But Covid-enforced long-term closures, rising rates and overheads have resulted in the salon no longer being economically viable. A £5 ($9.60) surcharge introduced in 2020 to cover the extra costs of PPE and cleaning went down badly with clients who felt they were already paying over the odds.

"This was not an easy decision to make; we have spent months exploring alternative solutions to keep the salon in business but unfortunately these have not come to fruition," he has said, praising his staff for their dedication and hard work and emphasising that they will all be paid fully.

It's an untimely end for the son of an electrical engineer who left school with two O-levels and founded his business with a £20,000 ($38,000) loan. But it's also a reminder that in the fickle world of hairdressing, tastes change, and if you can't adapt to them your profits are vulnerable to being shorn as dramatically as the locks to which you tend.

For it is not just the pandemic that has clipped Clarke's wings, but the entire "done" aesthetic on which he built his name. Like Clarke himself, the typical client was coiffed and lacquered to within an inch of her life, leaving the salon looking unmistakably as though they had been to the hairdresser. It was a badge of honour to look "done" and woe betide any naked flames that came between them and their Elnett spray.

Twiggy, known for her short hairstyle, has her hair trimmed in 1967. Photo / AP

"It was always such fun visiting Nicky," one former devotee, Paula, reminisces. "Whatever else was going on in my life, he always made me feel like a princess. He was a therapist as much as a hairdresser, and used to cheer me up when I was going through my divorce." Now 49, Paula's hairdresser of choice is Josh Wood, whose salon in London's Holland Park is favoured by a similar honeyed, moneyed clientele as was Clarke's in its heyday. Clients include Kylie Minogue, Elle Macpherson and Laura Bailey.

For while the pandemic will undoubtedly have hit Clarke hard, what has perhaps hit him harder is that today's raft of royals and celebrities are beating a path to other doors, those more discreet than his prestigious Mayfair one, owned by hairdressers with very different ideas on how modern hair should look.

Take George Northwood, whose Fitzrovia salon is different from Clarke's in every other way than that it tends to equally famous barnets. Where Clarke loved courting the press and tossing his strawberry blonde mane around wearing head-to-toe black leather, Northwood is self-effacing, his modest jeans and white-T-shirted demeanour belying the fact that he tended to the Duchess of Sussex's hair on her wedding day, and also throughout last week's Invictus Games.

Celebrity hairstylist of the moment George Northwood styles the Duchess of Sussex's hair. Photo / AP

That Meghan came to him at all was thanks to Alexa Chung, whose shoulder-length wavy bob defined the 2010s as vehemently as Jennifer Aniston's 'Rachel' cut defined the 1990s. If Clarke wielded his hairdryer like a weapon, Northwood waves his tongs like a magic wand – for in the affections of the busy modern woman, tongs, and the soft waves they create, have replaced the bouffant blow-dry entirely. The latter takes too long to effect, and is bad for the ozone layer. Nobody wants to sit in the hairdresser's chair for five hours. And they certainly don't want to look like they have.

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"A woman doesn't want to look like she's just stepped out of a salon, as the old ad campaigns would say. She wants to look more undone," says Northwood, who is so behind this word that he named his haircare brand after it. "That's significant of how women are in general now. They want to look effortless. The undone philosophy is the opposite of what Nicky stands for, but at the time, that box-fresh look was what was wanted. My mum used to have her hair done, and it would be blow-dried on the day and never look the same again. No-one ever looked as good as when they left the salon."

It's this disconnect between salon hair and homespun hair that is significant. This isn't the 1960s, when women had more time on their hands to effect the laborious beehives favoured by Brigitte Bardot. Nor is it the 1980s, when crispy, lacquered hair was fashionable. Rather than relying on a salon to look their best, modern women want to appear authentic, with hair they can style quickly and maintain at home.

Partly, this is pragmatism: most women find themselves busier than ever with the demands of modern life. But even those ladies who still have the luxury of lunching are more interested in doing good and giving back than in idling away afternoons in the hairdresser's chair.

As for those dwindling numbers who still enjoy a good primp and pamper, there are more services to accommodate into their maintenance routines – and budgets – than simply hair. In Clarke's heyday, the hairdresser was king. Now, it's as likely to be the plastic surgeon. At the luxury end of the market, hairdressers are as much in competition with Dr Botox for their clients' time and money as they are with each other.

Talented as he is, Clarke defined an era of high glamour which many believe won't return, despite the "roaring twenties" predicted after the pandemic. In 2022, luxury isn't a glossy blow-dry: it's something more nebulous.

"Nicky's brand inspired me, growing up. His salon was a destination where people wanted to go, and that's what I wanted to create," says Northwood, whose clients include Sienna Miller, Alicia Vikander and Daisy Jones. "But these days, most women are working, and don't have time for the pantomime and theatre that some salons used to trade off. We don't cut corners, but if I can get my clients out in 45 minutes, they love me for that. What is luxury now? Time. Time is our biggest luxury, and who's got time to spend it in a salon?"