A permanent wave, commonly called a perm or permanent (sometimes called a "curly perm" to distinguish it from a "straight perm"), is a hairstyle consisting of waves or curls set into the hair. The curls may last a number of months, hence the name.
Perms may be applied using thermal or chemical means. In the latter method, chemicals are applied to the hair, which is then wrapped around forms to produce waves and curls. The same process is used for chemical straightening or relaxing, with the hair being flattened instead of curled during the chemical reaction.
History The first person to produce a practical thermal method was Marcel Grateau in 1872.Ed. Foan, G.A. & Bari-Woolls, J., "The Art and Craft of Hairdressing, Pitman, 1938. There were three editions and the second (1938) edited by Bari-Woollss is strongly recommended for this subject. He devised a pair of specially manufactured tongs, in which one of the arms had a circular cross-section and the other a concave one, so that one fitted inside the other when the tongs were closed. The tongs were generally heated over a gas or alcohol flame and the correct temperature was achieved by testing the tongs on a newspaper; if the paper browned slightly it was about right. The waving itself was safe if care was taken to keep the tongs away from the scalp. The procedure was to comb a lock of hair towards the operator, moving the comb slowly with one hand to maintain some tension, while applying the tongs to the hair successively down the lock of hair towards the point. Each time the tongs were applied, they were moved slightly in a direction normal to the lock of hair, thus producing a continuous flat or two-dimensional wave. Skill using the wrist could produce slight variations of the wave. Thus, Marcel waving produced a two-dimensional wave, by thermal means only and the change was produced by plastic flow of the hair, rather than by any chemical means. Because of the high temperature used, the process tended to degrade the hair. However, in spite of its drawbacks, forms of Marcel waving have persisted until today, when speedy results and low cost are important.
In the Western world, long hair was standard for women until the 1920s, when flappers cut their hair short (into a "bob") as a form of rebellion against tradition. As the demand for self-determination grew among women, hair was shortened so that it did not pass the lower end of the neck. This was not only a political gesture but a practical one, as women began to take over men's work due to the great shortage of labour during the First World War. At the same time, electricity, which had been introduced mainly for lighting and industrial use, began to be used for heating and the application of the electric motor at the small business and domestic level. Shorter hair was improved in appearance by waving even more than long hair, and soon an improved form of waving would appear.
Nessler An early alternative method for curling hair that was suitable for use on people was invented in 1905 by German hairdresser Karl Nessler. He used a mixture of cow urine and water. The first public demonstration took place on 8 October 1905, but Nessler had been working on the idea since 1896. Previously, wigs had been set with caustic chemicals to form curls, but these recipes were too harsh to use next to human skin. His method, called the spiral heat method, was only useful for long hair. The hair was wrapped in a spiral around rods connected to a machine with an electric heating device. Sodium hydroxide (caustic soda) was applied and the hair was heated to or more for an extended period of time. The process used about twelve brass rollers and took six hours to complete. These hot rollers were kept from touching the scalp by a complex system of countering weights which were suspended from an overhead chandelier and mounted on a stand. Nessler conducted his first experiments on his wife, Katharina Laible. The first two attempts resulted in completely burning her hair off and some scalp burns, but the method was improved and his electric permanent wave machine was used in London in 1909 on the long hair of the time.
Nessler had moved to London in 1901, and during World War I, the British jailed Nessler because he was German and forced him to surrender his assets. He escaped to New York City in 1915, buying passage on a steamship under an assumed name. In New York, he found that hundreds of copies of his machine were in use, but most did not work well and were unreliable. Nessler opened a shop on East 49th Street, and soon had salons in Chicago, Detroit, Palm Beach, Florida and Philadelphia. Nessler also developed a machine for home use that was sold for fifteen dollars. However, his machine made little impression in Europe and his first attempts were not even mentioned in the professional press, perhaps because they were too long-winded, cumbersome and dangerous.
Eugene Suter and Isidoro Calvete
Eugene Suter was a Swiss immigrant who set up a fashionable ladies' salon in London's West End. He claimed to have come from Paris, which in those days was the center of fashion and style. He became aware of the possibilities of electrical permanent waving particularly when shorter hair allowed the design of smaller equipment. The system had two parts; one was the electric heater and the other was the system of winding and holding the hair on a form which was inserted into a heater. Suter tried to design a heater, but was unsuccessful.
Isidoro Calvete was a Spanish immigrant who set up a workshop for the repair and manufacture of electrical equipment in the same area of London in 1917. This equipment was just coming into use for the hairdressing and medical professions. Suter consulted him on the heater and Calvete designed a practical model consisting of two windings inserted into an aluminium tube. This ensured that when inserted over a root winding, the thicker hair nearer to the root became hotter than the thinner hair at the end. Suter patented the design in his own name and for the next 12 years ordered all his hairdressing equipment from Calvete but marketed under his commercial name, Eugene Ltd, which became synonymous with permanent waving throughout the world. At the same time, Calvete developed his own products which he manufactured under the name Icall, Ltd. The simultaneous manufacture of two competing lines would inevitably result in conflict.
Eugene company had a factory in Edgware Road, London. Its products included colour rinses, lustre-lending shampoos, setting lotions and patented steaming sachets as well as its curlers and electric dryer. At least two dozen of the steaming sachets were used for each perm. The company published its own magazine, The Eugène Waver, which was sent to hairdressers across the country. It covered advice on using Eugène products, styling techniques and hairdressing trends. Readers were referred to as ‘Eugène wavers’. The National Art Library at the V&A Museum holds volumes of the magazine covering the period 1928 to 1947. During the war, the company made millions of screws and rivets for airplanes and tanks in its factory. The company’s name was so well known that a 1945 page advertisement in Good Housekeeping magazine consisted of a blank page with just the handwritten words:‘What would you like for Christmas?'
'Oh, a Eugène wave, please!’From the onset, Eugene had realised the importance of the United States market and made great inroads, challenging Nessler who had started up there. The former also sued the latter for infringing the patent which he had taken out based on Calvete's design, and won his case. Nessler was to retaliate some years later suing Eugene in the United Kingdom, over some curlers designed by Calvete which were similar to the Nessler ones.
Development of the heaters The first heaters as described above were tubular, and were inserted over the hair which had been previously wound on to a form or curler. To facilitate this, after a preliminary preparation of the hair, such as washing, cutting or tapering, the hair was combed into up to about 22 sections or locks, a process known a sectioning or squaring off. Each lock of hair was then wound onto the curler (which was basically a rod standing perpendicular to the head), starting at the bottom using the hair nearest the scalp and proceeding spirally up the curler for the length of the lock. For this reason, the process was colloquially referred to as root winding. Considerable ingenuity was exercised in designing the curler to minimize the time, effort and difficulties entailed in winding. In early models, the heaters had a tendency to flop downward on to the head, but with improved designs, they tended to point outwards (see illustration).
A second type of curler was invented later, allegedly in 1924 by a Czech hairdresser called Josef Mayer. In this method, the hair was fed through a small clamp which, after winding, would hold the two ends of a roller. The ends of the hair were held on the roller which was wound around a point until it reached the clamp into which it was inserted. For obvious reasons, this was called point-winding. Mayer attempted to claim a patent on this method of winding, which was challenged in a Federal lawsuit by the National Hairdressers' and Cosmetologists' Association.
Calvete designed a new type of heater for this called a croquignole heater which fitted over the winding, rather like a bulldog clip. The trend was to replace some of the tubular heaters on the sides of the head with croquignole ones, to allow greater scope of styling.
Development of the units
Apart from portable models which became available later, some system of support was necessary for the curlers. At first these were fixed to the ceiling, but these were soon replaced by a machine that was universally adopted. A vertical metal pipe held a circular unit, called a "chandelier" from which the heaters were suspended. The bottom of the pipe was mounted on a base with wheels which enabled the device to be moved easily between clients or to one side of the salon. By providing a structure from which to distribute the electricity to the heaters, as well as to keep all of them in the correct position and orientation, the chandelier helped minimize the weight of the entire system while also keeping things tidy.
Because of expense, the early models only had a few tubular heaters, and permanent-waving process took place in more than one stage. As the process became more popular and competitive, a whole head of hair could be processed in one sitting, using up to 22 heaters, some of which might be croquignole.
Development of the "reagents" Although heat was required for perming, it was soon realized that if an improvement had to be made over the Marcel method, other means were necessary to avoid overheating and to speed up the waving process. The use of water on its own was an obvious choice, particularly as the hair was already wet from washing, for no other reason than that it prevented overheating, and that steam seemed to improve the process (hence the expression "steaming time"). It was not long before experiments were carried out on the use of additives, and it was soon apparent that alkaline additives improved the results.
Thus the profession started using what was called a "reagent", perhaps concocted by the hairdresser himself or sold commercially by the manufacturers of the machine. Two common ingredients were borax and ammonia, which are mildly alkaline (having a high pH) but are relatively harmless.
J. Bari-Woollss