The Scientific Hairdressers

In the 1920s and 1930s, some women's hair salons resembled laboratories more than domestic spaces. Metal helmets, electrical cables, mechanical chairs and heating devices invaded the rooms. Modern beauty then began adopting the aesthetics of industrial machines and applied science.

From 1909, German hairdresser Karl Nessler demonstrated in London the first electric permanent wave machine: a dozen brass rollers heated to over 100°C, suspended from a "chandelier" above the head, to set lasting curls. The process mixed an alkaline solution — initially, reportedly, cow urine — with hours of controlled heat; the first tests on his wife literally burned her hair.

Between the wars, the fashion for Hollywood waves transformed these prototypes into an industry. Salons equipped themselves with metal helmets, cables, clamps and timers: hairdressing was no longer just a manual gesture, it became a rationalized chemical-thermal treatment, presented as hygienic and scientific progress. The 1934 Icall — a so-called "wireless" machine, where resistors detached from power before being placed on the head — illustrated this quest for safety: Bakelite, thermostat, casters to avoid picking up hair from the floor.

The interior aesthetics followed: chrome, geometric mirrors, white surfaces and harsh lighting brought several salons close to Art Deco laboratories or operating rooms. Today these devices make us smile; at the time, they signaled modernity — a beauty conceived as an optimizable technical process, where the female body entered the chain of machines.