Hair, in all its crowning glory, is the one accessory we can’t take off.
Unlike a favourite pair of shoes that can be cast aside until the next time they complement an outfit, hair is an accessory we’re committed to sporting around the clock.
And when we’re down, ill, or under-par, it’s our cheating, tell-tale hair that will always betray exactly how we feel.
That’s the mantra of veteran hair stylist to the stars, Taylor Ferguson, the chair-man of style and the hair-whisperer whose art form can lift a person’s mood through sharp intuition and the blades of a pair of scissors.
Rather than a hair cut, the pandemic, maintains Taylor, caused many of us to cascade into a ‘hair rut.’
Grandparents, children, and everyone in between are again now realising that during a session in the chair – the hairdresser’s equivalent of the psychiatrist’s couch – the uplifting Taylor Ferguson will be at your back.
It’s been a long and illustrious journey since multi award-winning Taylor embarked on his glittering 60-year career.
Before he left Coatbridge High School at the tender age of 15, he straddled his parents’ two businesses for pocket money.
He’d shampoo the clients of his mum, proprietor of the popular Patricia Ferguson’s hair salon in the town, and deliver bread rolls to the loyal customers of his dad, Alan, who ran a family bakery.
Not only did both jobs earn him handsome tips, they also taught him the art of what was to become the indispensable tool of his life-long trade and vocation: getting along with people.
“It was a toss-up between pies and hair,” said Taylor. “I had a wee shot at both of them. I thought baking was a bit too hard. It was all done by hand, then. I thought the easier option was hairdressing.”
Not only did he fall in love with hairdressing, he also tumbled head-over-heels for salon junior Anne, with whom he tied the knot 51 years ago.
The ambitious young couple opened their first salon in Easton Place, Whifflet, before branching out to Academy Street, Coatbridge.
Recognising her son’s exceptional flair, Patricia was keen that Taylor see the world and immerse himself in the heady couture of the fashion capitals of Paris and London.
The outlandish models on whom he honed his styling and colour skills headed for the Parisienne training academy at which he trained straight from the Lido de Paris and Folies Bergere. Performers whose acts commanded top French franc on the Champs-Elysees.
For Taylor, though, London was more “with it.” But whenever he returned from either capital, the fire in his belly for a Scottish city salon burned even more fiercely.
It was 46 years ago when a surveyor friend drew to the couple’s attention a property that was arriving on the market in central Glasgow’s Bath Street.
“We committed ourselves to it,” said Taylor. “We both worked hard. When you do something like this, you don’t opt out of it.”
Taylor and Anne had stepped out of their comfort zone, and they knew it. In Coatbridge and Airdrie, everyone knew their names. But in Scotland’s biggest city, they were small fry.
On their first day of trading, they deposited in their till the princely sum of £9 from a passer-by who dropped in for a perm.
They had to up their game. And they did so by staking their presence at Sunday fashion and bridal shows in Glasgow’s top department stores, where fashionistas were left in no doubt that, at these glamorous events which showcased the ones-to-watch, hair was by Taylor Ferguson.
Before long, the term ‘Hair by Taylor Ferguson’ was tripping off the typewriter ribbons of the caption writers at top hairdressing journals and glossy magazines, and in the then-popular before-and-after hair and make-up transformation features in newspapers and on TV.
Not only were Taylor and Anne now attracting new clients to their fashionable Glasgow salon, they were also steadily converting them into returning, retained clientele.
Now hot property, Taylor turned his creative bent to photography and was soon on the international show circuit, exhibiting in London, Amsterdam, New York, Hong Kong and Thailand.
By then employing 35 stylists, he took an elite team to a show at the Royal Albert Hall, and Anne accompanied him to a massive catwalk extravaganza in the Jacob Javit’s Center on New York City’s Eleventh Avenue, after which he missed the last bus back to his accommodation, while complying with the demands of eager autograph-hunters.
Sleep deprivation ensued, as he took stylists, models, their hair sculptures and elaborate costumes on a whirlwind coast-to-coast tour of the States.
But he and Anne – parents to son Taylor Jnr – began to realise that the resulting cracks in their business in Glasgow were beginning to show.
“It is easy to get carried away with all these travels,” admits Taylor. “But when it starts to affect your business, you have to say: ‘Right, come on. Concentrate'.”
As well as a loyal client base, his salon has drawn Penny Lancaster, Rachel Hunter, Jenni Falconer, Jenny Powell, Darius, Lulu, Michelle Collins, Belinda Carlisle, Claire Grogan, Michelle McManus and Nigella Lawson.
While his salon’s ‘Walls of Fame’ pay testimony to his 60-year association and friendship with home-grown stars and Hollywood A-listers alike, it’s clear from the cut of Taylor Ferguson’s jib that he’s no diva.
“Celebrities are not style icons,” he says. “They have already established their look. People-watching in London is great, still. It used to be magazines, but it’s now one of the great sources of style. They are now getting loose and easy with their styles.”
People tell him things: The woman whose husband survived a stroke and she’s emotionally broken and needs a lift, and the person who entrusts him to reconstruct their hair as it begins to restore after cancer treatment.
Celebrities are no different, and he’s a custodian of their confidences, too. But what he will reveal is that Gerard Butler rinses but never shampoos his “great head of hair” and Ruby Wax has extensions – but you’d never know it.
“The only person I’d have liked to have done is Kate Moss. I’d have liked to have photographed her. I’ve seen her passing by here,” says Taylor, glancing out to a drizzly Bath Street.
“She is pretty ordinary looking, not tall. She has knock-knees, bow-legs. But she just knows how to make love to the camera, and I think maybe that’s her secret.”
Also, wishing he could give it “a wee tweak here and there,” Taylor adds: “I do think the Queen’s hair is a terrible thing.”
“I work in what I’ve always believed to be the best job in the world, and I get to meet great people every day,” said Taylor, whose wife Anne cites the day raconteur Billy Connolly strolled in, stood at the salon reception desk and delivered to the team a casual anecdote that could have constituted one of his stage shows.
“The one thing I love more than anything is being with a client and being entrusted with cutting their hair. No two people have the same type of hair or head shape, so everybody has to be treated quite individually.
“When you see people who are down, and you give them a new look, it makes you feel great.”
Now grandparents to Taylor and Alexander, Anne and Taylor relish their spare time at home in East Dunbartonshire, where he enjoys manicuring his garden and she keeps up to speed with the latest fashion trends.
Asked for tips on how to maintain a fruitful professional and marital relationship, Taylor - who this year celebrates his 77th birthday - said: “You develop selective hearing.”
Said Anne: “He is a typical artistic person: quite temperamental, and I don’t think he realises it. He annoys the life out of me, at times. But I know all artistic people are like that, whether you’re a chef or a hairdresser. Do I love him? Yes, I probably do.”
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