Last Monday night at the Grosvenor House Hotel not a hair was out of place as 1,800 hairdressers, including such industry greats as John Frieda, Charles Worthington and Anthony Mascolo of Toni & Guy, gathered for their big night out: the British Hairdressing Awards 2009.
This was no average trade event. “There were more millionaires in that room than at most other trade award ceremonies,” according to Jane Lewis-Orr, publisher and editor-in-chief of Hairdressers Journal International. Put simply, the British haircare industry is huge. The British salon business is now worth £5.4bn ($8.9bn); at the last count, there were 35,704 salons in the UK, and that number is rising, despite the recession; home haircare, including professional products sold in the salon, brings in £1.25bn a year; and the hair education business, training hairdressers, is estimated at £625m. In total, that's the staggering sum of £7.3bn; the same amount as Scotland's food and drink sales last year, according to national statistics.
It all began, according to John Frieda, with Vidal Sassoon. “During the 1950s and early 1960s, women would have their hair shampooed and set and it lasted for a week,” says Frieda, whose father used to cut Winston Churchill's hair. “Then Sassoon launched his cutting styles, the ‘geometric' [an angular style such as a sharp bob] and ‘wash and wear' [a perm] and that changed everything.”