Gallia Radio Active Face Mask
A little delve into the history of beauty and scientific innovation.
In 1930 the “new way to beauty” was provided by the Gallia Beauty Treatment System: a range of three facial masks which included the Plastic Mask (“a unique treatment for dry skin”), the Kelp Reducing Mask for double chins and the Gallia Radio Active Mask for correcting greasy skins.
These products were launched across beauty shops and stores where “special demonstrators” for the company, Gallia Ltd of London, were available to give free consultations and advice “without obligation.”
Gallia Ltd was one of the companies owned by Gaston Boudou. Boudou, who had launched Gallia in February 1926, was already a legend in the hairdressing beauty as one of the perfecters of the permanent wave, a style so popular in the 1920s and 1930s that companies struggled to keep up with the demand. The permanent wave had long been the holy grail of hairdressers and was the alternative to hours spent heating curling tongs over the fire or sleeping in rags to achieve the desirable curly look.
Charles Nessler, of Nestle fame, had patented a machine as early as 1909 and advertised it widely to the trade but it wasn’t until the 1920s that perming took hold with the craze for bobbed hair: a harsh style which was softened by curls. Permanents allowed short hairstyles to remain feminine and crucially gave the industry more work: as customers would need a new wave every six months as the hair grew out it lost its curl and would need refreshing every week or so. The process of permanent waves harnesses electricity to essentially bake a curl into a head of hair. The chemical reaction caused by the heating eventually made the sulphur bonds holding the hair to break, to reform around the curlers, and after the application of a neutraliser, be permanently retained in a new curly form. They had fundamentally changed the internal structure of the hair.
Nessler’s machine became popular but was a long, tedious and often dangerous procedure requiring nasty chemical solutions and temperatures of above 200 degrees. It was dangerous and clumsy. It could take up to ten hours if the whole head were to be done. As you can imagine, injuries were fairly commonplace: especially electric shocks. Women would be stuck under what was un-affectionately known as the Octopus: a cumbersome machine which had electrical cables suspended from the ceiling or a circular ring above the client’s head. Even if you avoided the Bakelite that the curlers were made from melting on your head, the whole process was fairly unpredictable as it needed to be carefully timed. Electrical currents were unpredictable. Your hair could be too frizzy, not curled enough or even fall out.
Hairdressers Weekly Journal described the new process: [a woman’s hair was] “encased in asbestos and baked for ten minutes using a specially and ingeniously devised electrical heater hanging from a well-conceived bracket in such a manner as to take all the weight from the head. Each of the heaters – and there is a number – require as much electricity as an eight-candle power lamp. A double layer of brown paper was placed near the head to keep as much heat from the head as possible, and an assistant with small bellows was kept occupied for a similar purpose. After the work, the hair was shampooed and was shown after drying to have retained its frizziness.”
After Nessler made the first one other hairdressers made improvements; tinkering with the system. In 1918 Eugene Sutter revealed his new edition of the permanent wave machine “The Eugene” which used less electric current than Nessler’s and worked quicker. He introduced a perforated sachet and two-way curler.
But it was Boudou’s “Gallia” machine that was the real technological step forward. Boudou revolutionised permanent waving by putting rubber into the rollers which kept steam escaping and allowing a lower temperature. He also introduced his secret lotion “boncella” which fortified the hair while it literally boiled. Gallia made Boudou a very rich man: every machine cost 1000 francs, and a lot of places had one. Boudou claimed that the idea had actually come to him in 1900 and had been working on it since then but had not perused it much further. It was spectacular technology, and Gallia was at the forefront of it. By the late 1920s Gallia had training sites and corporate representatives on four continents and even had the world record for the quickest perm - completed in twenty-nine minutes and thirty seconds.
Salon owners and forward-thinking entrepreneurs like Gaston Boudou would want to have all the latest equipment and secure every new method of beauty treatment.
That the idea of a Radio Active mask was part of this embracing of technology is important. This is a company - and indeed an industry- that loved its science, that loves innovation and change.
And this is borne out that the product was not just available in the Gallia salons in London but was also across Britain. Jessie Finlayson, a ladies’ hairdresser of 114 Muir Street, Motherwell, offered the Gallia Radio Active mask promising: “it will leave you feeling soothed and refreshed for the evening’s pleasure.” If you cared to you could visit Charles, 239 Anlaby Road, in Hull on the 8-13 December 1930, then you could have received a demonstration of the Gallia mask “a truly wonderful treatment which gives – as none other does – that elusive charm so much desired by every woman.”
And whilst we are not still using Gallia Radioactive Masks for a while it seemed that this was the future of beauty.