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What’s It Like To… is a regular column where New Zealanders from all walks of life share first-hand experiences. Here, Hawke’s Bay hairdresser Kay Deakin talks about retiring from hairdressing after a 56-year career and shares memories from those years including learning how to blow dry hair - a new thing in the 80s - from books and pictures.
“I’ve always trained people; I took on my first apprentice when I was 20. We’d probably put through about three or four a year. I must have trained dozens and dozens and dozens, although that’s slowed down during the years.
The industry’s changed a lot now. We have a huge shortage of hairdressers. We try to get stylists to meet the expectation of the client’s needs and the level of stylist they require is just not there. Now, more hairdressers are specialising and working in home salons in what I think of as a sort of cottage industry. I get it, they don’t want the hassle of employing people, but it’s not doing anything to pass on their skills to develop young stylists.
Hairdressing has been such a good career for me. When I started, I was really nervous and quite shy, not an outgoing person. It helped me develop personally. You have to really put yourself out there and not only look good but have good communication skills.
You really get to know people in this job. We probably see some people more often than they see their family. It’s astounding what they will tell you. You don’t have to take it on board but sometimes you have to understand that people just have to let it rip.
I’ve seen lots of children grow up and then seen their children come through as well. I had one client right from the beginning, from my very first salon. I did her hair for her wedding and she followed me for years and years through the seven or eight different salons I’ve owned in Hastings and Taradale. She’s still going to the salon I’ve just retired from now.
Retiring at the age of 73 was a big decision for me, even though I’d worked for 56 years. I was a bit dubious at first, but I am really enjoying it. It’s nice to have the time to potter around my house, taking my time with getting things done. I’m spending more time in the garden and thinking about my next project - maybe a renovation. I need a bit of a challenge.
I’m still doing a bit of work though, helping out my old business when they need it. This time of year it’s panic stations - there’s always someone off sick and I’m happy to help out. I miss the hype!
I got into hairdressing because I was bored at school and was interested in the creative industries. And I loved fashion.
That was back in the 60s. It was an interesting time for hair but it was back-breaking to be an apprentice. We shampooed all day long - back in those days we used forward basins and there was nothing relaxing about it, even for the customer.
If you were fast enough at shampooing you moved on to settings and if you got good enough at that, you progressed onto “combing up” the sets. Everyone set their hair back then. All the ladies would be under the dryers, smoking cigarettes. There was a lot of hairspray.
The industry’s changed a lot now. We have a huge shortage of hairdressers.
I was really driven and ended up buying my first salon when I was 19. I wasn’t fully qualified, so I had to employ a senior stylist while I finished my training. Back then, it took about 4500 hours. We had very thorough training and I think that’s why New Zealand hairdressers were so well thought of overseas.
The big skills back then were setting, cutting, perming, cutting and styling. We did colours but it was at a basic level.
The late 70s and 80s were innovative times in hairdressing and that’s when blow drying first came in. No one knew how to do it, so we had to teach ourselves from pictures and books. I loved that time. We still had a lot of discipline with what we did but there was a transformation from sets to the freedom of a blow wave.
We started to change the way we cut hair and then came the development of colour and being more creative with that. It really changed the way we worked and developed our skills. We still worked really fast but we were varied in our skills, very versatile.
We took a lot of pride in what we did. From day dot I entered competitions. The World Hairdressing Cup was every two years. We went to Las Vegas and Paris. I never thought I would manage to compete at that level but I did. It was probably one of the highlights of my hairdressing career.
I started my salon when I was so young and was blissfully unaware of what business was really all about; I was more into the creative side of it. But by the 80s I had a real desire to improve my business skills and I did lots of courses to develop them. That helped me move off the floor to concentrate more on the business and training hairdressers.
There have been so many trends come and go over the decades. I was good at perms but I was glad to see the back of them. And I’m not a fan of anything punk or too avant-garde. I can see that it’s clever but all of those bright colours don’t do much for me.
My favourite era for hair was definitely the 80s. It was so creative. But what I really love is creating beautiful hair - I just love to see beautiful.”
