A wood-handled curling iron from the 1920s purchased at a garage sale inspired a hairstylist to become the curator of a museum dedicated to her craft.
Vina Pepin, the owner of Studio 164 in Collingwood, has been collecting hair salon artifacts for most of her career. Many of her most unique items are now displayed at her salon, which she purchased in 2020.
One of the oldest is a barber chair from 1888 set up in the front window facing Hurontario Street. At the back of the salon is another barber chair from the 1920s with a porcelain base.
Pepin’s in-salon exhibits include eight barber poles. A wood pole painted in blue and white diagonal stripes was rescued by a client from a building that used to be the barber shop for the University of Toronto.
“A client brought it in, he was a construction worker and he helped take down a wall and lo-and-behold, that barber pole was there,” said Pepin.
She is proud of the poles up on the walls of her salon. Some are the traditional red and white, others are blue and white, or red, white and blue. A few are made of wood and painted, but one from the 50s is automated to spin and light up.
“The history of the barber poles comes from the days when barbers were also dentists and kind of doctors, and they used to do bloodletting,” said Pepin. “So they would have rags, and they would get covered in blood and they would hang them up outside and they would dry red and white and they would move in the wind. The barber pole was introduced through that.”
Her first item, the curling item that required heating up in a fire or with an electric heater, is hanging on the wall near the chair where she gives her clients haircuts.
Also on the wall in front of the two other client chairs are Handy Hannah hair dryers in mint green and powder blue. Made in the 1950s, the electric dryers were considered cutting edge at 215 watts. Pepin’s still work, but it would take a long time to dry a head of hair with them. For comparison, today's dryers use about 800 to 1,800 watts depending on the level of heat being used.
Pepin said she’s not sure how anyone dried their hair with them as they produce little more than a “breath of air.”
Still, she’s proud of the retro dryers, and would like to complete her collection by adding a pastel pink dryer to the wall.
Also part of the 1950s era of barbering, Pepin has a tube of Brylcreem still in the box, which she searched for over a long time.
“I think it took me 24 years to find,” she said. “It was very popular in the 1950s. My dad used it.”
Next to the Brylcream is a cardboard retail display for “Genuine Lee Clip Combs” holding a rainbow of plastic combs with metal clips for storing them in shirt pockets.
Pepin points to a framed record on the adjacent wall “this is really cool,” she said.
“A client dropped this off, it’s a recording of “Shall I have it bobbed or shingled,” and it’s an actual song. A brother sings it about his sister going to the hair salon to get a bob.”
The song was recorded in 1924 by Ernest Le Messurier at Starr in London, Ont.
Tiffenny, one of three stylists working at Studio 164, calls the salon a “museum.”
“It was fun,” said Pepin of her decades of collecting items from auctions, garage sales, and online bidding. “A hair salon is all about character … It was fun to see what I could get and what I could find.”
Pepin purchased the Hurontario St. salon after working there for a few years. This isn’t the first salon she’s owned, but it’s the first since she moved to Collingwood in 2016.
She’s been doing hair since she was 16 years old.
“I love doing hair,” she said. “I may not like some of the clients that come with the hair,” she laughs. “But I still love it. It’s just fun.”
Since she purchased it in 2020, she’s been renovating the space, adding a coffee bar for clients who are waiting for a cut or colour service. But she wasn’t able to host a grand opening while the pandemic was causing lockdowns.
She’ll be opening her museum/ hair salon for an open house Saturday on Dec. 10 from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. The event will include refreshments, giveaways and free tours of her collection displayed at the salon.