PROFILE:Peter Mark has been cutting our hair for 50 years. KEVIN COURTNEY, no stranger to the salon's scissors, looks at a company that has spent half a century on the cutting edge
DUBLIN, 1977. A future Irish Times journalist is sauntering down Grafton Street, wide-collared shirt open to the fifth button, tight bell-bottoms threatening to cause permanent falsetto. The Bee Gees' Stayin' Aliveis blasting out of Golden Discs, and this dude is planning to hit Zhivago's tonight and show his Saturday night moves. But first, I need to pop into the hairdressers, and there's only one place to get the right disco do.
Peter Mark at number 74 Grafton Street was the place where disco kings and queens got their crowning glory done up in the late 1970s, and it’s still the place where trendy young folk go – only these days they’ll be looking for a Justin Bieber or a Lady Gaga rather than a John Travolta or a Farrah Fawcett. But long before the whole disco inferno broke out, Peter and Mark Keaveney were blazing a trail for hairdressing in Ireland, and gently pulling a whole generation of young Irish men and women into the modern age of style and grooming.
This year, the company celebrates its 50th anniversary – marking an entire half-century since the brothers opened their first salon at 87 Grafton Street in 1961. Vidal Sassoon was said to have changed the world with a pair of scissors – the brothers Keaveney did the same for Ireland, bringing Carnaby Street-style into the Irish high street, right on the cusp of a pop-culture revolution.
Fifty years later, the feather-cut hairstyles of the disco era are back in vogue, and Peter Mark is still making the cut. The company has 74 branches around the country, and employs 1,640 people, so you could style it a true Irish success story. Gary Kavanagh, Peter Mark’s group creative director, joined the company as a rookie hairdresser in 1969, and has seen the changing face (and hair) of Ireland through the salon mirror.
“Their first salon was beside Switzers, above a chemists. The rent was £6 a week and the fit-out cost £800,” says Kavanagh. “The second one, at 74 Grafton Street, was on the site of the old Palm Grove club, designed by Sam Stephenson – very futuristic. What astonishes me is that Peter and Mark were very young lads when they took on the commitment of running a salon. And they also took on changes in fashion – they’d see something happening in the UK and they’d introduce it here.”
Like blowdrying, for instance. Up to around 1969, rollers were standard issue for Irish hairstylists, but then a revolutionary new device called the blowdryer arrived, and suddenly women – and men – were packing heat in their holiday luggage.
“Peter and Mark introduced that whole unisex idea – up to the time of the Bee Gees, men never went into ladies’ salons, but by the 1970s most men were wearing their hair long, and they couldn’t get the style they wanted from their barbers. So their girlfriends would say, `Go to my hairdresser, they’ll do it for you’. And so you’d see the couple walking out with identical hairstyles,” says Kavanagh.
The brothers also set new standards in training, setting up colleges in Dublin and Belfast. “Back then, apprenticeships weren’t very structured – you just kept doing it until you got better at it. Now we train our own staff from day one.”
Kavanagh worked for a few years at number 74 before striking out on his own, but remained friends with the Keaveney brothers. When his solo venture didn’t work out, the brothers took him back right away, and made him manager of their third Grafton Street store. Then, says Kavanagh, Mark had a brainwave, and put him in the role of creative director, responsible for everything from organising photo shoots and ad campaigns to fashion shows and general PR.
Cultivating the brand has paid dividends – Peter Mark still has a high profile in the Irish fashion world, and its customer base runs from teenagers looking for a Jedward to older people who have remained loyal to the company ever since they got their first Dusty Springfield do.
“We have new stylists coming in and they’re going to clubs and they see what’s on the street. I still keep involved – I’ll go to a concert and see how the kids are wearing their hair. Right now, I’m seeing a lot of back-combing.”
What Kavanagh also notices is that hair fashions come back, but always with a difference. When the 1980s revival hit, it wasn’t just the same old big hair and mullets – the styles were more a modern, zingy homage to 1980s hair. In recent times, the smooth, straight look was in, and demand for GHDs (hair straighteners with ceramic irons rather than metal ones) skyrocketed. “Now the 1970s wavy look is back in, but again it’s got a twist. The great thing about our business is you never know what’s coming.”
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, every branch of Peter Mark is setting up its own themed event for two weeks from tomorrow, in aid of the Make-A-Wish foundation. The idea is to raise enough money to grant 50 wishes to 50 sick children. Kavanagh is confident that the staff will rise to the occasion. “Peter and Mark are both still closely involved with the company, and the loyalty they instil is unbelievable.”
Kavanagh has no doubt that Peter Mark can survive the recession and be there for the next phase in hair. Recent surveys have shown women are unwilling to skimp on their hairdo – and men are shelling out for good grooming too. “We’re just going to keep riding the crest of the wave, and hopefully come out the other side.” With their hair looking immaculate, of course.
