ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the hairdresser as craft worker, moulding and making heads of hair, but crucially at the same time crafting friendships with clients. Drawing upon a year-long ethnographic study of a hair salon, the author argues that the only transient element of many hairdresser –customer service encounters is the production–hair. She also explores how through the crafting of hair, friendships are also made, bound together in the transient palimpsest of hair. There will be types of service roles, particularly those without repetitive or lengthy encounters with customers, which are less likely to result in friendship. The relationships do exist between hairdresser and client which are more than just a commodity exchange or a performance of emotional labour; rather they can be enduring, genuine and significant friendships. The triplet of previously invisible forms of labour began to challenge dominant assumptions around the fleeting, unskilled and routine nature of service work.
