A Hairdresser’s Account

Portrait of an unidentified woman.
Image courtesy the Galt Museum & Archives | Akaisamitohkanao’pa, 199110004614

When Dorothy Clark, a 24-year-old graduate of the Minneapolis Academy of Beauty, moved here in 1924, it was to a much different Lethbridge than we know today. While a swath of local spas, salons, and beauty shops can be found now with a simple search engine inquiry, Mrs. Clark was entering a much smaller market; her arrival to Lethbridge marked her as one of only two working hairdressers in the 14,000-person mining community.

The other, Elizabeth McKinnon, was the owner of Florentine Beauty Parlor. The salon was located in the Rylands block, now the site of Cash Canada along 5 Street South. Dorothy saw an advertisement for the parlor while in beauty school, and got in touch with Mrs. McKinnon; soon afterwards, she was riding the Minneapolis-based Soo Line up to begin her work in Canada.

Dorothy took on a wide variety of tasks at the salon, particularly as it came to hair care. Mrs. McKinnon dealt with facials, shampoos, and booked appointments at the salon, as well as perms completed with electric metal curlers. Dorothy was uncomfortable with these, as she had never taken a course in how to use them, and there was a considerable chance of burning someone!

This didn’t mean, however, that Dorothy stayed away from heat tools altogether. Marcelling—the tight waves we now consider as quintessential to the 1920s as jazz music or silent films—was a common task for hairdressers. Preparation for this style included heating a curling iron over a gas flame; on the occasion where the iron proved too hot and burned a customer’s hair, Dorothy didn’t charge them, foregoing the usual rate of $1 for the hairdo.

Hair colouring, while not as common or vibrant as it proves today, was certainly not unheard of. In a 1984 oral history conducted with the Galt Museum, Dorothy recounted keeping a curtained-off area of the salon, which allowed customers privacy while having their hair dyed. Hairdressers used hydrogen peroxide to lighten hair, while henna powder could be mixed into a paste to give the hair a “rich brown highlight.”

Especially surprising to Dorothy were a group of weekly clientele: the women of the red light district. She recalled these women, many of whom were in their early twenties, as “surprisingly plain,” wearing little makeup and proving rather quiet.

While cosmetology has advanced a lot in the past century (both scientifically and locally!), it is valuable to consider what elements of the field—particularly its social impacts—have remained exactly the same.

Information on Dorothy Clark’s oral interviews with the Galt Museum, as well as resources regarding cosmetics and beauty through the history of southern Alberta, can be found at galtmuseum.com/research.