Half a century of sparkle
| Author | Judith Lacy |
| Published date | 12 May 2022 |
| Publication title | Guardian, The |
Hair always had to be done well in the How household. The hair setting started when Gabrielle was 6. She got her first perm when she was 8 for Aunty Margaret’s wedding.
Gabrielle’s great-grandfather did barbering on the ship that brought him to New Zealand then set up a barbershop in Waverley.
As a little girl, Gabrielle had only one career goal - to become a hairdresser. And so it came to pass with Palmerston North opera singer Kathi Craig last year calling Gabrielle the “leading lady of hairdressing”.
Gabrielle Bundy-Cooke is best known for owning elite salon Spectra in Palmerston North.
As she reflects on 50 years of hairdressing, she says she still seeks ways of making today better than yesterday.
“Hairdressing has been a tool for me to be and do for people what I can.”
In January 1972, she started her six-month pre-apprenticeship course in Palmerston North at the Modern College of Hairdressing. The course was worth 1000 hours of her 6000-hour apprenticeship.
In October 1972, she started working at Antonio Beauty Lounge in Hawera as owner Anne Squires’ first apprentice.
“I just loved it, I never thought ‘this is hard’.”
She was on $13 a week, an above award wage. There was no Saturday shopping then but there would sometimes be Saturday clients going to a function that night. Bundy-Cooke got paid double as the client paid double.
“We always had the ability to earn an extra dollar or two.”
She says in 1972 hair salons could be smelt from streets away but to her it was a sweet smell.
“I wanted to be in that place. I wanted to make ladies look and feel beautiful.”
The second of four children and the eldest girl, Bundy-Cooke grew up on the well-known sheep farm Highlands near Eltham.
She went to Catholic girls’ boarding school Erskine College in Wellington for three years.
Academically she struggled but excelled in drama and left at the end of the fifth form aged 15.
In her final report, the nuns wrote “Gabrielle is best to focus on something that requires no academic ability and hairdressing is maybe just what she will do.”
She recalls her mother reading the report and saying “if I could get my hands on those nuns”.
“She was so upset but I didn’t even know what it meant, I was going to be a hairdresser.”
Bundy-Cooke says her parents, Selwyn and Betty, were great parents who believed in her.
“Mum always said ‘whatever Gabrielle sets her mind on doing...
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