Sepia Saturday: 12 July 2014

Alan at Sepia Saturday says:

Back in the Good Old Days/Bad Old Days (*) when you went to the Barbers/Hairdressers (*) you would have a short back and sides/full perm and manicure (*) in a dirty little back street shop/smart beauty salon (*). Our theme image for Sepia Saturday 236 - post your posts on or around the 12th July 2014 - shows a lady enjoying a manicure whilst her hair is under the dryer at a salon on Eighth Street, New York in 1942. The photograph is by Marjory Collins and is part of the Flickr Commons stream of the Library of Congress. As far as possible themes are concerned, there is hair/beauty/nails/hair dryers/strange headgear.

Oh doesn't this week's theme bring back lots of memories?  My mother's idea of heaven was to go to the hairdresser's.  She did this every week from memory on a Friday afternoon.  I was probably picked up from school and then we would go to Madame Dupal's upstairs in the arcade at Garema Place in Canberra for her blow dry and set.  You can see some photos of Garema Place back in the day here and here.  I would sit quietly and scour my favourite magazine Seventeen from cover to cover.

I managed to find an old issue of Seventeen on eBay a few years ago and treasure it. There is lots about makeup and hair in here to giggle at.

My friend Judith and I experimented with Mary Quant makeup quite a bit and my mother took these photos of us.  They're not sepia but I'm sure you'll forgive me.

Alex and Judith c1973

Alex and Judith c 1973

Mary Quant makeup kits were very special and had stick on jewels that glistened in the sun.  We thought we were the bees knees.

I also found these photos.  They are the kind that I remember my mother shrieking at my father saying "No don't !" as in "Don't take a photo of me looking like this!" but I'm glad he did.  We have very few photos of people "au naturel" - mostly we get all dressed up or make sure we have make up on before we let someone take a photo.

Alex and Barbara c1969

Here I am with my mother in our bathroom at 3 Nungara Street Aranda.  We thought that bathroom was so swish.  A great big mirror which helped make a small room look big.  The mirror cleverly concealed all the shelving you could want in a bathroom if you look at this next photo.

My mother went grey quite early in her life.  She had lots of fine hair but with not much body and so it had to be teased and curled on rollers or with bobby-pin curls within an inch of it's life to get her the required volume.  She used an eyebrow pencil and mascara because she said she didn't have much in that department whereas I inherited my father's long luscious eyelashes and "generous" eyebrows.

So that's the best you're going to get for hair and makeup photos from us.  Although here are a couple more that fit the theme/are dear to my heart.

This one is of my great-Uncle Ossie.  That's my paternal grandmother's handwriting at the bottom of the picture there.  It says "Ossie on trip with Ted going North".  Ted would have been her husband.  I often wonder what this was all about.  This would be Ossie Carrett - my grandmother's brother.  Ossie was born in 1910.  This photo reminds us that we don't always have access to the latest plumbing facilities when we're on the road and sometimes a dish will just have to do the job.  I'm guessing this was taken in the 1940s sometime but maybe it's later.

A bit like this photo from Picture Queensland of a woman washing her hair in the 1920s.

Hulett, L. E.

John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland :ca. 1924

And then finally this one.  It's not sepia either but a favourite of mine.  It's my father-in-law who we lost too soon.  He's waiting to have his hair cut in the backyard of Charlton Street by my lovely sister-in-law Kath.

Bert Daw 1980s

What about you?  What memories/photos do you have of hair/makeup?  Check out Sepia Saturday for more...