92. MASON PEARSON. THE KING OF BRUSHES.

If you only buy one hairbrush, invest in the best brush money can buy, a MASON PEARSON brush. An essential item for any beauty kit, whether you’re a professional hairstylist, make-up artist or novice. Or for anyone who takes pride in his or her crowning glory.

Here’s a quick history lesson about the company.

Mason Pearson is the founder and engineer inventor of the Mason Pearson Brush. In the mid 1860s he worked for the British Steam Brush Works where he learned the trade. He mastered brush making by hand. Later to partner with Raper Pearson Gill to form a small brush making business.

In 1885 he invented the automatic boaring machine to speed the process of making brushes by hand. He became well known for his brush making skills and he won the Silver Medal at the International Inventions Exhibition awards. He also created ‘pneumatic” rubber cushion brush. It took Mason until 1905 to improve his technique and become successful. Most of the brush work is still done by hand and the company remains a family business.

90. Ara Gallant. Hairdressing Hall Of Fame.

Twiggy- flying hair.

Ok, so you watched the video on the previous post called "flying hair" now you can see where the idea came from.

Ara Gallant was born Ira Gallantz in 1932 in the Bronx, but later changed his name because he felt Ara Gallant sounded more exotic. And the life he led was, indeed, an exotic one. Gallant started his career in fashion as a hairdresser, working at Bergdorf Goodman as one of New York’s top colorists. By the mid-1960s he was approached by Vogue and began working exclusively as hair-stylist on photo assignments. In fact, he was the first hair stylist to be paid for such work. Today we call that a "session hair stylist".

Gallant worked with many of the great fashion photographers of the period, Richard Avedon, Irving Penn and Bert Stern, among them. His most notable contribution was the introduction "flying hair" a visual gimmick he first used on an Avedon shot with Twiggy in 1966. The effect is still widely copied today.

Angelika houston

Sophia Loren

By the early 1970s Gallant began shooting picture himself. His first assignment was celebrity portraits for Interview magazine. His work often juxtaposed classic Horst-like compositions with contemporary scenarios. In the early 1980s Gallant moved to L.A. to lead with his friend Jack Nicholson and to pursue a directing career. It never happened, in the 1990's he committed suicide in a hotel room in Las Vegas.

Sissy Spacek

Drew Barrymoore

Ara Gallant

Buy this book. Ara Gallant by David Wills.

87. Know Your Product- Eugène Schueller

Those of you who have been following HEADS WILL ROLL will know I'm a sucker for hair-history. So without further ado, let me introduce you to Eugene Schueller, he's like the Godfather of modern hair color.

Eugène Schueller (20th March 1881- 23rd August 1957) a French chemist and a graduate of the Institut de Chimie Appliquée de Paris (now Chimie Paris Tech), discovered p-phenylenediamine and develops a synthetic formula to color the hair in 1907.

This formula is nicknamed “Auréole“.

On 30th July, 1909, Schueller registers his company, the Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux ( literally "French Society of Inoffensive Hair Dyes"). The guiding principles of the company eventually became L’Oréal as we know it today.

Controversy.

During the early twentieth century, Schueller provided financial support and held meetings for La Cagoule at L'Oréal headquarters. La Cagoule was a violent French Fasict-leaning and anti-communist group.

*This was extensively researched by Michael Bar-Zohar in his book, Bitter Scent.

Further Reading-

History of Hairdressing.

Patron Saint Of Hairdressers

St. Martin de Porres.

Now I’m not a religious guy, however I do like the idea of salons world wide hanging this little picture up on their walls.

St. Martin de Porres became the patron saint of hairdressers because hairdressing was one of the duties he performed for his brothers in the friary.

Check him out, he looks like Moss Deff or the guy who played Jesus in Madonna’s Like A Pray music video.

St. Martin de Porres was born at Lima, Peru, in 1579. His father was a Spanish gentleman and his mother a coloured freed-woman from Panama. At fifteen, he became a lay brother at the Dominican Friary at Lima and spent his whole life there-as a barber, farm laborer, almoner, and infirmarian among other things.

I wonder what I have to do to get canonized as a modern day saint? And wouldn't it look good on my resume`.