The glory of Dusty Springfield.
Even Vidal Sasson started off styling big.
Nancy Kwan's sleek bob was a taste of things to come. |
Around the same time at Elizabeth Arden in Sydney’s Castlereagh St,
John Adams was setting the locks of the city’s most stylish with spray,
spray and more spray. That mastered, he boarded a Pan Am flight for
London and an eight-year, on-off touring contract with Dusty
Springfield. “After Arden, I had a little salon in Kings Cross and at
the end of the day would go to Chequers night club where I met Dusty,”
he explains “On tour, it would take me an hour to do her hair, and the
same with her makeup, and then she would spend another two hours making
it bigger and stronger,” Adams laughs.
Springfield possessed great timing: with the temptation of a First
Class ticket she’d nabbed Adams from under the nose of fellow singer
Rosemary Clooney, another fan of the confidence-making flick conferred
by Adam’s tail comb. As a consequence, Clooney was furious. (A similar
thing happened with former Valonz stylist Brent Lawlor, who has
traversed the globe as part of the Dixie Chicks’ entourage; little
changes but the ’do.)
While Adams was swinging between Sydney and Carnaby St, a softly spoken
lad from Cronulla, Lloyd Lomas, progressed from brushing the floor and
folding towels to coiffing “the concrete Sandra Dee styles” at
Silhouette in George St, Sydney. Silhouette spanned five levels devoted
to hair, beauty and fitness; in the mid sixties, it wasn’t just the
’do’s that were big, all the prestigious salons like Elizabeth Arden
and Silhouette were huge too.
Flamboyant Englishman Peter
Michael Franelli, better known as Xenon, who had started with Adams at
Arden, was also attracting a lot of publicity on the Sydney scene.
“Xenon worked for Alexander, a very established salon in Double Bay,”
says Maggie Tabberer. “He was a skinny, Tom Jones lookalike with this
huge Afro but such a character and a brilliant hairdresser.”
Then, amidst the lacquered Ellnet helmets, a new wave of hairdressing broke in London and the ripples reached our shores. |