Weep for the loss of cheap beauty care!
March 30, 2010
How We Lived Then gives prices from a Coventry women’s hair salon early in the war. Measuring Worth translates them to modern pounds. Estimates vary depending on what measures of value are used, but any way you slice it… the idea of once being able to get a shampoo and set for the modern equivalent of £20 makes me want to cry.
- Normal hair-cut: 1s. = £1.84 to £8.34
- Shampoo and set: 2s. 6d. = £4.61 to £20.80
- Marcel wave: 3s. = £5.53 to £25
- Permanent wave: 15s. to 30s. = £27 to £250
Here in London in 2010, £50 is cheap for a women’s wash and cut. This goes a long way toward explaining why so many Londoners, myself included, wander around looking like they’ve been dragged through a bush backwards. If prices were this cheap at the salon, I would so totally be there every week.
12 Comments
leave one →
I remember getting my hair cut in London for less than £20 – this would have been in the 1990s. I can still find places to get my hair cut for £10 by having a trainee cut it, or for nothing by doing it myself.
I’ve used Headmasters a few times (all with quite pleasing results) who do stand by appointments for £25. You don’t get to pick your stylist but I’ve always found them to be super competent and very nice! Just phone up on the day and they’ll sort you out. I do this because a) I’m pretty disorganised and organising a hair cut any more than a couple of hours before the event is sort of a hassle and b) because I think the price of haircuts usually is completely mental expensive! Plus I like having a different stylist each time as it mean’s you’ll never get the same cut twice.
Try this place for cheap haircuts in London:
http://www.hairbyfairy.co.uk/contents/area01/section01/section0100.php
I’ve been there a couple of times, and have always been happy with the results. It’s just round the corner from Covent Garden.
If I could pay someone else prices like that to wrangle my Medusa snakes, I would *never* touch my own hair, but I’d probably need a lot of maintenance. A wash and set only lasts about a day on me because of my frizz, though I once had an adventure with Shirley Temple curls that lasted a couple more than that.
I’m not sure the women of the forties thought those prices were cheap. It was a relatively prosperous time as there was plenty of war work and salaries were high, in contrast to the previous Depression years, so I think they felt they could afford it, and also that they needed to keep up their appearance since they were working (not to mention meeting handsome men in uniform on every corner).
The thing is, curls weren’t optional. You had to have them if you wanted to be fashionable. Alternatives such as buns, braids and french twists just aren’t very flattering to most women. If you couldn’t go to the hairdresser, you had to do it yourself at home with curlers, condemning yourself to a poor night’s sleep. There were no home hairdryers, and I don’t think there were heated rollers, although I believe there were curling irons. Washing your hair really did mean staying in for a whole evening, so there was plenty of incentive to fork over the money to get your hair done at a salon.
My aunts still go to the hairdresser every week. It’s where they meet their friends and get all the gossip, exactly like the Steel Magnolias. One of them doesn’t even keep a bottle of shampoo in her house.
For myself, I enjoy going to a salon. I love having somebody else wash my hair for me, and they always do a better job of styling it. Still, I wouldn’t want to spend every Saturday morning of my life there. It’s not that my life is busier than theirs; it’s that I have more options for enjoyable ways to spend my free time.
It’s interesting to consider the time/money trade-off. When I think about how much time I spend a week washing and styling my hair, an hour every Saturday doesn’t seem like much. Of course you would have to maintain the style, but I don’t think it would be much more of a time investment than at present. And I would love to have someone else style my hair, not being particularly neat-fingered myself.
As for the cost, this office girl earned £3 a week — not a princely sum but not to be sniffed at either, and nowhere near what the girls on the factory floor earned. Assuming a wash and set was 2. 6d. and remembering that there were 20s. in the pound, that means a trip to the salon cost about 4% of her weekly take-home pay. I spend more than that on booze, and I am not a big drinker.
Of course, if you were really posh you could just get your lady’s maid to handle your hair. Now that’s luxury.
Shampoo AND SET? I would so have gotten my hair set every week at those prices! sigh…
I think part of it is also that the hairdressers have fewer customers requesting that sort of thing, so they raise the prices to make it worth their while. Now many people wash their hair daily, or at least multiple times a week, which means that a wash and set wouldn’t last, and that the hair needs to be styled every day. And now it’s possible to get salon-quality products and equipment for private use. So in some way I understand the modern pricing, although I also think it’s boring. I want a pit crew!
Rebekka (who hasn’t had a hair cut in almost a year, and cuts her own bangs)
Prices outside London are much cheaper, I pay £18 for cut and blow dry and my daughter always comes here (west Midlands) when she has her hair done as she can get cut, highlights and blow dry for same price as just cutndry in London!! I would love to go to the hairdressers more often but modern blow dry only lasts 1 day with me, now if I could have a set once a week and it last like my mum always did, then that would worth it!!
I too would spend much more time at the salon if it were more affordable. I pay $50 for a wash and cut and some kind of style at the end. Plus Tip! I only spend it and deem it worth it twice a year maybe because the stylist is a friend I have know for about 10 years now and I know I will be happy with it. She does bang trims for free though! i start work as a receptionist at a hair salon in a couple weeks so maybe this will all change then!
Prices for a decent haircut in NYC aren’t any better–which is why I wait to get mine cut until I’ve obviously graduated from “carefree” to “bedraggled.”
Oh my gosh, I’d be done the hairdressers in a flash! It’s so depressing, but supports the idea that people took better care of themselves/made more of an effort in the past – I’d have a blowdry every week if the cost was proportionate!