The craft of wig making. National Theatre, Southbank

In addition to my interest in hair shops and salons as a way of accessing the diversity of lives and activities that goes on across London, I was recently lucky enough to be invited behind the scenes of the National Theatre on the Southbank to visit the Wig Department where all of the theatre's wigs are made in-house.  In the studio, a cross between an open-plan office and a hair salon with shelves of disembodied heads and desk drawers full of curlers, combs and hairsprays, a certain part of London's multiculture is produced.

Most actors in most performances at the National Theatre will be wearing a wig and, as Helen, my guide, reiterates, it is crucial that the wigs do not look like wigs, for both the actor and the audience they must become hair.  Covering everything from elaborate period pieces to a simple change in hair colour, from hiding bald spots to creating bald spots, this is a craft that calls for a huge amount of knowledge, skill and attention to detail among the wig-makers.

Helen shows me around the studio and explains the process of the making of the wigs from measuring the actor's heads using cling film and sticky tape to the knotting of the wigs, using a crochet-hook-like implement to pull three hairs at a time through a mesh cap, then from fitting the wigs to the actors to shampooing, conditioning and restyling them after they've been washed.  Each wig, the majority made from human hair, can take up to a week to make.  Helen emphasises the importance for the wig-maker to know the character for whom she (and, like hairdressing, this is a highly feminised occupation) is making the wig.  These craftswomen attend rehearsals, talk to the director and the actor and get to know the character, the way they dress, speak and move so that the final piece is as much a part of the character as their clothes, their voice, their words or even their body.

One unexpected issue that comes up is the difficulty in acquiring non-processed human hair from suppliers as much of the hair that arrives via global networks to be sold predominantly as wigs or hair extensions comes already separated, cleaned, processed and ready to be woven onto Western heads (for more information on the global trade in human hair see anthropologist Emma Tarlo's work).  However this beautifully cleaned, shiny and straightened hair is not much good for making, for example, pirate wigs for Treasure Island.  And so the department now sources hair from a supplier who deals in unprocessed hair acquired directly from the tonsorial practices of temples in India.

Throughout my visit the work done by the wig-maker's hands is highlighted: the hands as knowing and understanding the textures of the different hair they work with; the hands as the key tool in the knotting of and caring for the wigs (the work done by the hands felt as repetitive strain injury in the fingers, wrists and forearms); the hands as working in unison with the hooks, the scissors, the combs; the hands as bearers of what Helen calls 'unconscious competence'...

To see more of what the Wig Department at the National Theatre do follow this link.

Thanks to Helen Casey, Deputy Head of Wigs and Make-Up, for inviting me to visit the department and showing me around.

The hair salons of Lewisham. Part 6

Although technically no longer a salon, the former Superstyle Hair Studio is located inside Lewisham's Model Market which played host this summer to cocktail-swilling, gourmet burger-munching, instagram-toting crowds.  The whole thing was marketed using the hashtag 'Newisham' which seems to be used on Twitter with equal measures of derision and excitement.

Clearly Superstyle Hair Studio was not closed down in order to be filled with gastronomic porn (the original Model Market closed sometime in the 2000s) but this scene is reminiscent of wider changes going on across south-east London (and across much of the city).  In a supermarket queue in Peckham, a friend overheard a conversation between two women talking about how they now have to make hairdressing appointments further and further in advance because, as a result of salons in the area having closed down to be replaced by more fashionable (gentrified? gentrifying?) shops and cafés, there is more demand for the remaining salons.  A perhaps innocuous effect of the regeneration/gentrification that is taking place in the area, but an effect, nonetheless, that is having an impact.
     

The hair salons/shops of Lewisham. Part 5

The hair salons of Lewisham. Part 4

After a sunny afternoon walk around part of the borough of Lewisham:

The salon below caught my eye because of the white printed sign in the window which reads 'POLSKA KOSMETYCZKA & FRYZJER' meaning Polish beautician and hairdresser. One of the marks of London's superdiversity is its polyvocality, the multitude of languages that make up the city's everyday landscape.  Here it is used to announce to the Polish women of Lewisham that inside there is someone who will literally speak their language whilst doing their hair.   

The window display of Kings and Queens Salon is dominated by adverts for Lycamobile providing cheap phone calls around the world (in this case to Nigeria).  The salon also offers to 'send and receive money around the world [from] here' via the Western Union and 'global' money transfer via Sigue.  In her 1994 work Space, Place and Gender, the geographer Doreen Massey calls for a consideration of 'a really global sense of place' in which we must think of the social relations 'that stretch beyond, tying any particularity into wider relations and processes in which other places are implicated too'.  In the local, everyday space of this hair salon, global connections are made.

Thinking of the global connections that are present on our local high streets brings to mind Suzanne Hall's map in which she links the Walworth Road and the world through the origins of the independent shop owners:  

The hair salons of Lewisham. Part 3

So far I have been a little bit disappointed with the lack of puns in salon names in Lewisham so this cheered me up:

The hair salons/shops of Lewisham. Part 2

I hope these next images are large enough to show the detail of the shop windows. They display everything from hair straighteners to wigs, from different shampoos, conditioners and natural oils to silk scarves. Also those multi-coloured nets that I see hanging up outside every Afro-European hair shop, what are they used for?

As a white woman who shampoos and blow dries my hair twice a week and ties it up in a ponytail, many of the products in the Afro-European hair shops remain a complete mystery to me. In the documentary film Good Hair, Chris Rock examines the amount of time, money and effort spent by black women on styling their hair; that is spent trying to get 'good hair': straight, European-style hair.

The very idea that there is 'good hair' (and, thus, by definition 'bad hair') underlines Eurocentric ideals of beauty: straight blond hair and blue eyes (in Toni Morrison's 1990 novel The Bluest Eye, Pecola wishes for blue eyes to overcome her blackness and to become beautiful). However notions of beauty are not monolithic, they are socially constructed, socially defined and hold political power.

Thinking about hair and beauty products and practices is one way to consider how the material fabric of the urban landscape and the bodies that occupy it are marked by the inheritance of imperialism. The products available in these shops serve as a reminder not only of London's everyday diversity but also of Britain's imperialist history, its racist discourse and its power relations which are, in turn, inscribed onto (certain) bodies and woven into their hair.

A Sign of Regeneration?

About a week ago I noticed that my local caff had a new shop sign. I was taken aback by the nagging sadness I felt at the replacement of a sign that triggers memories of hungover fried breakfasts with friends, of what my boyfriend claims (and I dispute in an ongoing discussion) is the best pie and mash and liquor in south east London and of hasty lunch hour sandwiches with work colleagues.

(I should underline here that the caff isn't closing, they have merely changed their shop frontage, but these are experiences, memories and meanings which are tied up with the very fabric of the street, with the concrete presence of the caff and, apparently, its sign).

Yet apart from this slight sadness, I didn't give it too much thought.

Today, however, when I was out photographing hair salons, I noticed that some of the other shop signs on the same stretch of street have also been updated, repainted and rewritten. The newly-spruced up frontages include a nail bar/beauty salon.

This revamping of the shop signs is one of the physical manifestations of the regeneration of the area.  Not only is the physical appearance of the street altered but new meanings are created and are attached to this appearance. Last year banners went up around whilst new paving slabs were being put down proclaiming 'Catford is Changing'.  This change is not merely on the surface of street-level but also in the ways that people think about and interact with the street, 'Catford is Changing' in our imaginations.

This regeneration also coincides with the development of 'Catford Green' which will be 'launching' this autumn (one of many areas to have been rebranded as a 'Village' or and a 'Green'). Built by Barratts' Homes on the skeleton of the old greyhound stadium, 'Catford Green' will consist of six hundred new houses and flats with links to local parks and shops.

So, as is often asked of regeneration, who is it really for? The current residents and shoppers for whom the local shopping street is part of the everyday routine? Or for the new residents, those that need to be courted?

The changing signs are a sign that the times are changing.