How brothers Peter and Mark went from having one small salon to creating a nationwide hairdressing chain.
Peter and Mark Keaveney from Carlanstown in County Meath set up their first hairdressing salon on Grafton Street above Maguire's Chemist in 1961. Irish women welcomed the urchin, the swan line, the bouffant and the Italian cut, and their customer base quickly grew.
Mark Keaveney says expanding the business to include a premises in the newly built Stillorgan Shopping Centre in the mid-60s was a step into unchartered territory.
We took a gamble and it paid off.
The introduction of affordable synthetic wigs allowed women to achieve a wide range of hairstyles. Stylist Gary Kavanagh shows a Ginchy wig which was in great demand twenty five years ago and says synthetic or false hair is still very much in use today.
This episode of 'Head To Toe’ was broadcast on 10 November 1989. The reporter is Barbara McMahon.
'Head to Toe' was a weekly lifestyle programme which focused on clothes and fashion, and ran for 10 series between 1988 and 1997. The first show was aired on 21 October 1988 and was presented by Frances Duff, Mary O'Sullivan and Marty Whelan. Mary O'Sullivan described the show as "a magazine mix of everything to do with clothes, people, the rag trade in general, personalities, swap shops, the nostalgia scene, people's private collections, country shopping and dressing and budgets and even problems". (RTÉ Guide, 14 October 1988, p.6)
