The Original 1928 Permanent Wave Machine

Following World War I, women's hairstyles drastically changed from long locks to a shorter style that was easier to manage and led to the popularity of a hair permanent.

Hazel White had the only permanent wave machine in the Grayslake area shortly after she opened the first beauty shop in Grayslake on Railroad Avenue in 1928. Her shop contained shampoo and dryers. Later, she added a permanent wave machine using a combination of chemicals and electrically heated clamps to achieve curly hair.   

This permanent wave machine which she used for several years as she moved her shop to several locations in the village, is on display at the .  

In 1934, a wireless permanent wave machine and a non-electric method using tholyglycolic acid were developed. In 1940, Hazel moved into a newly built house and shop at 35 N. Whitney Street. Later, Hazel moved from her shop and home on Whitney Street to a house on Harvey Street. Here she had a shop in her basement where she practiced her trade  until her death on Aug. 2, 1997 at the age of 96.

She had been in the beauty shop business in Grayslake for 64 years. Hazel was born in 1900 in Waukegan and lived in the Grayslake and Gurnee areas all of her life. Prior to the 20th Century, if a woman with straight hair wanted to have curly hair, she had to either sleep with rods and pins in her hair or spend time heating a curling iron and curling her hair. In 1872, Marcel Grateau developed a method by which hair was temporarily curled by heated rollers.

This process was known as marcelling. In a 1979 recorded and transcribed interview with Hazel by the Grayslake Historical Society, she explained the process.

"The ladies would have long hair and I would marcel it and do it up in a couple of buns. Also, I used to do a lot of French braiding," she said.  

Hazel attended beauty school classes in Chicago for about a year, she said, before opening a shop on George Street in Grayslake. She later moved to several other locations in the village before opening what she said was "the first, real" beauty shop on Whitney Street where the Peppermint Stick School is now located.  

Her permanent wave machine then was the only one in the Grayslake area, she said. Others were in Round Lake, Libertyville and Waukegan. Historians note that during World War I, women started to shift to shorter hairstyles that were easier to manage. Some historians report as a result of the war, women cut or bobbed their hair as a symbol of their political and social emancipation. 

In the 1920s women started to bob, shingle and crop their hair. Women began marcelling their hair creating deep waves using permanent waving in which the hair was put in curlers and heat was applied. In the 1930s women began to wear their hair slightly longer, in page boys, bobs or waves and curls. Early permanent wave machines used electricity and various liquids to perm hair.

The  is open from noon to 4 p.m. Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and during downtown community events.  

- Contributed by the Grayslake Historical Society.