NOWHERE IS the economy more accurately reflected than in the magnifying mirror of the beauty industry. The female workforce was a key factor in the boom, and it was working women who built haircare, manicures and facials into their budget: simple and relaxing treats that kept them looking sharp at the office.
The non-working wives of wealthy men between them funded an outbreak of spas, cosmetic surgery and constant beauty maintenance. These two groups were not mutually exclusive. Quite a few of the working women on a budget bought cosmetic surgery with their SSIA money. The non-working wife of a wealthy man is never found too far from her hairdresser.
“We were a country of ladies who lunched,“ says one hairdresser. “People were getting a blow-dry on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. People weren’t even brushing their own hair. Now people book their colour for a Thursday because they want the benefit of their blow-dry over the weekend, because they’re not getting a second one.”
The beauty business is not for the fainthearted. “Going forward we’ll have to drop our prices,” said one practitioner who specialises in laser hair removal, a very expensive affair. The Irish Times was quoted €100 for one 15-minute session of laser hair removal for the chin in Dublin, and €80 for the same treatment in Cork. There is a general consensus the people who have provided the facial fillers and Botox which changed the face of Ireland will have to drop their prices as well – some of those vials cost €350 each.
The women on the cosmetics counters in Dublin agree it is very quiet. “But it’s January,” they say. They know their customers. Last week, several of them remarked that people were due to get paid for the first time since Christmas on Friday. On Monday, the nice lady in Boots in the Jervis Street Centre added that “It’s children’s allowance day tomorrow and we’re doing a free gift. We’re a chemist, so we get the footfall. I don’t feel under threat. ”
On another Number 7 counter elsewhere in the Dublin area, the woman said, “We get quite a lot of people saying that they normally buy a more expensive brand, that they’ve come to our products because they are cheaper.”
Women are buying skincare products rather than make-up. On the Guerlain counter in Arnotts, Victoria and Diana, both from Latvia, are staying calm, their beautiful eyes steady under their liner. “It’s much worse in Latvia,” says Diana, who is blonde and looks like a goddess. “The government there takes all the people’s money.”
At the Benefit counter, Ciara doesn’t think things are too bad. “We launched a new blusher, Coralista, on Saturday and we sold 30 on Saturday alone. And the waterproof version of Bad Gal mascara, €22.50, came out last month and is doing very well. Yes, they read about it in the magazines.”
The Peter Mark hairdressing chain has not laid any workers off and, like Number 7 cosmetics, has seen customers trading down from more expensive places. People have changed to Peter Mark, says its chief executive, Barry Dempsey, “Because when they walk in the door they know how much it’s going to be. And secondly because it is more affordable.” Hidden costs for mysterious and strangely named treatments are a hallmark of the expensive salons.
Peter Mark has 73 salons on this island – seven in Northern Ireland. “Northern Ireland is doing well,” says Dempsey.
“All our numbers are up in Northern Ireland. We have two salons within easy driving distance of the Border doing well and Belfast is the same. In the Republic, the significant trend is that suburban centres are holding up much better than the high street salons in cities. For example, salons in Winthrop Street and Patrick Street in Cork, or Henry Street and Grafton Street in Dublin, have to work harder.”
This is a common cry from city businesses: customers are not going in to the city, but they are still going to do their supermarket shop at their local shopping centre, and getting their hair done at the local hairdresser. Last week one city centre hairdresser in Dublin was offering a full head of highlights for €50, and half-price vouchers on a lot of things.
The backbone of the hairdressing industry is hair colour. “Colour is your biggest docket,” said one suburban hairdresser. “A good 60 per cent of your business is colour.”
Dempsey disagrees with this figure, and says colour is about 50 per cent of Peter Mark business. Whatever the percentage, colour is damn expensive, although prices vary wildly. In suburban salons, a full head of highlights starts at about €110 and, during the boom, women were getting this done every four weeks. Now even the rich are cutting back.
“I have an older client who is a woman with a wonderful, international style,” says one hairdresser with a very wealthy clientele. “She travels a lot and highlights will cost you €200, €300, depending on the head. She was going into town to get her colour done at a Dublin hotel every four weeks. I cut it this week and she has grown her hair out completely. She’s gone grey – it looks fantastic. People are going to work on their make-up more.”
Going grey is probably going to be a trend – this week even Sir Tom Jones revealed his new grey hair and beard. But, for those who are not happy to go grey, the intervals between their visits to the hairdresser are getting longer and longer.
“The one thing they’re not economising on is haircuts,” says the hairdresser with the wealthy clients. “Colour and even blow-dries are down but, as to haircuts, I’ve never been busier. They know a good haircut is an investment.”
On the subject of plastic surgery, there is a definite class divide. “Everybody’s had it but the professional classes won’t talk about it,” said a professional woman of whom I was too frightened to inquire. The hairdresser with the rich clients said: “Plastic surgery is huge, and most of them seem to have gone to France. I can’t believe how many people are doing drugs either, but that’s another story.”
Anecdotally, Ireland took to plastic surgery with a touching enthusiasm but, because there has never been a register of specifically qualified surgeons here, there are no figures available for how many people underwent it, or how often.
Then, of course, there were all those operations abroad. And the operations performed by foreign doctors here. A plastic surgeon, who has been involved in a lot of cleaning up after procedures have gone wrong, says, “Tummy tucks bring the most complications. Face-lifts, major liposuction, rhinoplasty, eyelid surgery – all of those things can give complications.”
The most popular operation this doctor performs is breast reduction, another quite complicated operation, and he is adamant that it cannot be used to cope with a weight problem. “Under the VHI, you can’t have a body mass index of over 27 to get a breast reduction,” he says.
One sensible woman who’d had a breast reduction was very enthusiastic about it. “It did take a while to get over, but it changed my life. It was definitely worth it.”
People undergoing other procedures must be similarly enthusiastic, despite Ireland’s history of fly-in-for-the-day surgeons and the occasional tragedy of a patient dying after plastic surgery. The plastic surgeon says, “We haven’t seen any slump in demand for our procedures at all.”
There is a general consensus that the spa business, a product of the boom, is sinking like a heated stone.
“I keep on getting texts from hotels offering me free accommodation if I come and use their spa,” said one beautician. “You have to remember that there are destination spas, and then there are spas that were just tacked on to some hotel as an afterthought,” said another. “The service in them varied enormously.”
In her own beauty salon, this woman is seeing the recession cutting deep.
“Quite a few of my clients have lost their jobs,” she says. “Mind you, they always tell me that in the middle of a treatment. But I’ve always been flexible about payment. I’d say ‘We can’t have you going round like that. We can settle up next time.’ I’ve always done that. People are more than their jobs. When they lose their jobs, they keep their treatments going to keep their spirits up.”
During the boom, she saw her average client get younger – and not just cosmetically. Boom teenagers were high maintenance, with their professional tans, hair colour, manicures, pedicures and waxings. In this woman’s salon, schoolgirls were having advanced waxing – that is, radical waxing of the pubic area. The Hollywood wax – which leaves a totally hairless pubic area – is €50, a lot of pocket money. That business has now fallen.
However, the youth spend on cosmetics has probably borne up better than the money spent by older women.
The Mac make-up counters, based in the Brown Thomas chain and catering at least partially for young women and girls, were the only make-up counters I saw last week that looked remotely busy. It was Mac Studio Fix foundation that was largely responsible for the tanned, matte faces of our young girls. Mac prices are not expected to fall, despite the low dollar and low sterling.
In fact, there is anger in the cosmetics trade that one department store started discounting prices – a practice that has not been seen on the cosmetics counters for many years, if ever.
Strangely, it was hairdressers, who listen to so many of the nation’s troubles, who were the single group I spoke to during the writing of this series who mentioned what can only be termed “spiritual” values.
“People need to concentrate on what’s going on inside them a bit more,” said one. “And put a bit of work into that. Then you look great.”
And in the beauty salons, prices are already down in a flurry of special offers. A Cork salon offered a Guinot treatment, reduced from €44.95 to €34.95. A young lady kindly described it down the phone: “It’s a light cleanse, followed by exfoliation, mask and massage. It’s a one-hour treatment. And it’s absolutely beautiful.”
- Series concluded
Highlights in the dark: hairdresser bans talk of recession
Jim Hatton doesn't have many complaints about the recession, except that he is a bit tired of hearing about it on the radio. "It just makes me want to pick up
Hello!magazine," he says, speaking for millions. On the other hand, he is a businessman who has been working since he was 15. "Christmas came a week late this year," he says. "I did notice that. And January is January. The first couple of weeks were a bit dodge, but now we're back to normal. We're closed Mondays. Thursday, Friday, Saturday we're out the door. And Tuesday and Wednesday, we manage. Ask me again at Easter."
Director of the Revive Hair and Urban Spa in Milltown, Dublin, Hatton has been a hairdresser for 28 years. "I've done the eighties, the nineties and the boom. I feel very positive. I'm fine."
For 15 years, he worked at Neville Russell in Terenure, where he says he learned a great deal. "The money was the horsey people in the head scarves. They weren't snobby, they were posh. It was one holiday a year and everybody smoked and everybody drank coffee and we had a great time. All that changed with the bloody boom."
Recently, he did his own survey at a charity ball in Dublin, in which he asked 20 women whether they'd bought a new dress for the occasion or had their hair blow-dried. They'd all had a blow-dry rather than the new dress. "You'll never give up your blow-dry," says Hatton. "What the recession means is that the client has pushed her visit out from six weeks to eight to 10 weeks. That means we're down two or three visits a year. And that's our recession. It's manageable."
Hatton is enthusiastic: "Colour is a wonderful thing. There are 11 shades of blonde in L'Oreal, imagine." At the same time, he is realistic and not given to panic. "Over the last two years, hairdressing is down 35 per cent in the UK and Ireland."
And he's still very busy, working hard. "Our clients are VIPs, young professionals, and the 'rainbow youth'." Jim calls his customers over 65 the rainbow youth. He is very fond of older women and thinks they are neglected. "They're the ones spending money, honey. They just need a bit of direction, a bit of honesty."
On the subject of the recession, Hatton says he has given strict instructions to his staff. "I told them 'Leave the recession at the door. We want to feel the love. We don't want to talk about 750 people losing their jobs. We know about that'."