PERMS – A CRAZE THAT HAS LASTED A CENTURY.

2016 was the 110th anniversary of the most popular technical service among generations and generations of women who have to thank a certain German hairdresser, Karl Ludwig Nessler, better known as Charles Nestlè, the first to carry out an official perm in his beauty salon in front of watchful colleagues and on the locks of his poor wife.

THE BIRTH OF THE PERM.

If you think back to photos of the age (1906), perhaps seen at your grandmother’s house or in some old photo album, you’ll remember that women had very long hair, so the idea of creating a wave to give a little movement to the length, perhaps permanently, was something of a dream for women and it was one that our hero Charles made a reality. Before him many people had adventured down this rather slippery slope. Almost all had used objects of various sizes, heated up as needs be, to roll locks of hair. But their efforts had never gone any further. However, our intrepid hairdresser understood that heat alone wasn’t enough. To make the result ‘permanent’, hair had to be previously softened and made more pliable thanks to a chemical treatment with an alkaline substance, then curled around heated metal rollers. Our clever Charles invented bronze curlers that were electrically heated, from the top down, with hair rolled around them, to keep them removed from the head in order to avoid painful and ugly burns to the scalp. Just imagine that every curler weighed 3 or 4 hundred grams and sometimes got so hot that it burnt the hair, which fell out in clumps. This was the invention that he presented in his salon in the distant past – 8th October 1906. The process was long, costly and laborious for clients and the machine was extremely bulky. Damage to scalp and hair were always just around the corner. And imagine that hairdressers at the time thought that mechanisation would affect their creativity! Charles patented his invention and successive improvements and, following the outbreak of the Great War, he fled to the U.S., where he learned that copies of his invention were on the market and had been in use for quite some time. It’s said that he set up a real beauty empire, opening salons in major U.S. cities, where he offered other services he’d invented to his clients, like false eyelashes and - believe it or not - a kit for home perms. He was a genius and a skilful businessman.

DEVELOPMENTS.

History played a part, because towards the end of the War – around 1916/1917 – due to the loss of so many men in combat, many reserves were called to the front and the women stayed at home and began to undertake formerly male jobs. Their looks were adapted as a result. For practical reasons, women cut their hair and thanks to these short styles the perm triumphed. Who would have thought it? The first famous woman to dare to try this new style was Madame Coco Chanel, in1920. Since then the perm has alternated between being extremely fashionable and extremely unfashionable. After WWII, it became an essential part of leading cosmetic houses of the time and, in the ’50s, it had a second boom. Curls were perfect and very constructed. Hairstyles were neat and extremely elegant. They were styles that we might call ‘plastic’, but they reflected the need of women to be reassured and pleasing, given that during the war they hadn’t paid much attention to beauty. The ’60s saw a boom in the Vidal Sassoon bob and, until the legendary ’80s, no one talked much about perms. Do you remember? Huge padded shoulders and curls created big hairstyles and supported hair. Everything was exaggerated. The ’90s were in contrast to the previous decade. There was a desire for minimalism, for a re-dimensioning, with straight hair almost without volume, and lots of pixie cuts with a fringe.

THE PERM 3.0.

Cosmetic companies who understood the genius of Charles’s work, asked themselves how they could make an extremely popular technical service fashionable once more and the answer was research. Over 110 years the formulations have notably improved, application techniques have made giant steps and technology has become so reliable that perms are now safe for scalp and hair. We at Medavita have also ridden the wave of innovation. Our Curladdict curling system is a new generation perm with red Grapevine. A unique system that combines the hold of a curl with the effects of support and light, tonic movement, with no heat source. It is ideal for all hair types: thanks to the modulator filter that regulates the intensity of the curling fluid, you can create a different type of mix for every need and type of hair, from strong, natural hair to coloured hair, as well as particularly de-coloured hair that has been totally bleached or has highlights. The results are neat curls, soft ringlets and sinuous waves. The perm has developed, in many cases it has changed its name, but it has now become a real beauty treatment to be applied in complete safety.