The Story of Hair: The "Blow Wave"

If You Blow-Dry Your Hair,
You Have This Jewish Woman to Thank

If you’ve ever wondered why hood dryers—those domed head prisons so ubiquitous in women’s hairdresser shops throughout much of the ’50s and ’60s—aren’t so common anymore, you can look to Rose Evansky, the Jewish inventor of blow-dry styling who died last month, at the age of 94.

Ms. Evansky, born Rose Lerner in 1922 in Worms, Germany, unleashed the revolutionary blow-dry style onto the world from her shop in Mayfair, London then the cultural capital of hairstyling. One day, Ms. Evansky eyed a “barber drying the front of a man’s hair with a brush and a hand-held dryer.” She thought: “Why not for women?”

Not long after, the technique made headlines. By brush of luck one day in 1962, the British editor of Vogue happened to drop by Evansky’s shop. Aghast at Ms. Evansky’s technique, the editor rang the fashion editor of The Evening Standard—later that night the newspaper unleashed “the blow wave” onto the world.

Ms. Evansky, whose father was imprisoned at Dachau in 1938, and who, speaking only German and Yiddish, escaped Nazi Germany by way of Kindertransport, championed her so-called “Mayfair style”—one characterized by “freedom and movement.”
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As for her own hair (naturally air-dried) she cut it herself. As she once told W magazine, “Why would I let anyone else when I can do it myself?”

from Jewish Telegraphic Agency

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Meet the 90-year-old inventor
of the blowout

Consider if you will, the humble blowout. Freeing us from the tyranny of the bulbous overhead dryers our forebears had to suffer, (curlers digging in to scalps while the heat bears down anyone?), it's both ubiquitous and unique—there's a stylist offering them on every main street, yet no two ways of doing it are ever the same. But where did it all begin?

W sat down with the woman behind it all, possibly the beauty industry’s best-kept secret: 90-year-old Rose Cannan. The originator of the woman’s blowout and co-owner of Evansky’s, the leading London salon of the 1960s, Rose’s clientele pre-dates the better-known British salons like Vidal Sassoon and Leonard of Mayfair. Not one to court the limelight, Cannan had all but disappeared until a few years ago when she was “outed” at a cosmetics conference by a friend in the audience who pointed out that she was very much alive and kicking in the British seaside town of Hove.

Here she tells us about the day she invented the blowout technique:

“It was a Friday and all the chemicals were on the trolley ready to straighten my clients’ hair, yet again. I hated straightening hair. And I remembered something that had happened a few days before. I’d been wandering past a barbershop in Brook Street around the corner from our salon in North Audley Street, and I saw the barber drying the front of a man’s hair with a brush and a hand held dryer. And this image—of the barber with the dryer—flashed through my mind and I thought, ‘Why not for women?’. So I started doing this on my clients’ hair, and Lady Clare Rendlesham (the Vogue editor and famous champion of 60s style-setters) came in, took one look at what I was doing and said, in that formidable voice of hers, ‘What are you doing Rose!?’ and went rushing back out.

“I immediately thought, ‘What have I done?’. My usual Jewish anxiety kicked in—Rendlesham could make or break a career. She reappeared with Barbara Griggs, who was a journalist for the Evening Standard, and said, ‘Look what Rose is doing!’ They went out again. The whole thing was mysterious to me. And that afternoon, this piece appeared in the newspaper about the new blow-wave. That’s how it came on the market.

“Of course, not everyone was pleased. When the article came out in the paper, my husband [her first husband, the late Albert Evansky with whom she owned the salon] said to me, ‘Have you gone mad? We’ve just bought 20 new hood dryers! What shall we do with them? Throw ’em out?!’

“I do feel like I’ve achieved something. I’ve freed women from having to sit under a hot dryer for ages, frying on hot days—though in the winter it was pleasant enough. I was the opposite of all those male crimpers—I wanted to operate with clients who were mature women who understood what I was doing for them. We chatted, we talked, it was fun. Sometimes they’d say, ‘My husband won’t like this.’ And I’d say, ‘Never mind about your husband, look at it for yourself!’ and I’d give them a little lecture about independence.
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“Where do I go now to get my own hair done? [Laughs] My hair is best described as ‘windswept’ as I live near the sea. I’ve never colored it, and I cut it myself. Why would I let any one else when I can do it myself?”

from W

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Remembering the Stylist
​Who Truly Understood Curly Jewish Hair

Those of us who have tangled with our Jewish curls owe a debt of gratitude to Rose Evansky, of blessed memory, the inventor of the blow drying technique. 

Evanksy died last November at the age of 94 – not exactly in anonymity, but her name was not of the household variety, either. You could say that she flew under the radar on a stream of hot air. In the business, however, her name was legendary. Vidal Sassoon, the better-known British hairstylist, once called Evansky “without question the top female stylist in the country and the equal of any man.”

If you were a girl with curls in the straight-haired culture of the 1960s, you know from my angst.

Hair was supposed to swing, like everything else in the 60s! I inherited my father’s curly hair and struggled daily to tame it, with poor results. If there was an ounce of moisture in the air, my straightened hair would frizz up before I even made it down the driveway. My ringlets were a more reliable predictor of the relative humidity than the meteorologist on the 6:00 news.

I would sit on my bedroom floor paging through magazines, cutting out pictures of celebrities with flowing tresses, like Marianne Faithfull, Mia Farrow, and Patti Boyd. Standing in front of the mirror, I’d gently shake my head back and forth, like the model in the Breck commercial – but instead of rippling sinuously from side to side, my frizzy locks steadfastly refused to budge.

I tried every trick in the book. Wrapping my wet hair around orange juice cans and sleeping on them was a nightly ritual. When I could no longer tolerate the discomfort, I wrapped my wet hair around my head and secured it with tape. I applied the (probably carcinogenic) Curl Free and U.N.C.U.R.L. products many times, resulting in a flat, chemically burned look. My best friend even agreed to iron my hair – using a real iron from the laundry room – in a process that flattened the ends but left them scorched, too.

I’m pretty sure it was after Woodstock that “letting it all hang out” came to apply to hair, as well. Gingerly, I experimented with the new look. The day I emancipated my curls for good was when Carole King’s first album, “Tapestry,” came out. Barefoot with faded jeans and long, curly hair, Carole was my new role model.

And then, like a miracle, the handheld blow dryer came into my life. At long last, I could tame my stubborn locks!

Evansky, born Rosel Lerner in Worms, Germany, was 16 years old when her Polish father was sent to Dachau and she was hustled out of Germany on a Kindertransport to safety in Britain. Her father survived the concentration camp, and the family was reunited in London the following year. Rose found a position as an apprentice to Adolf Cohen, one of the giants in the hair industry, who also trained Sassoon.
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She had a talent for the business, ultimately rising to the top of her profession as the most sought-after female stylist in posh Mayfair salons. With a keen understanding of the look women wanted and with their impatience for sitting under a hooded dryer, she came up with the idea of the blow-dry technique. Eventually, she became so successful that she opened her own shop, Evanksy’s, one of the most popular salons of the day.

Evansky once confessed to having “Jewish anxiety” when she introduced her new technique, but she needn’t have worried. Both the press and the public embraced it. As inventions go, this one ranks with microwaves and caller ID as one of my favorites.
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In her 90s, Evansky wrote her memoir, In Paris We Sang, in which she described the harrowing adventures of her early life. It makes me happy to know that out of the darkness, she found fulfillment and success, and was given the gift of longevity to enjoy it.

from ReformJudasiam.com