Prior to the 1960s, men’s hairstyles were limited, to say the least.
And when I say prior to the 1960s, I mean prior to Jay Sebring.
Before Jay Sebring completely changed the profession and the industry, a man’s barber had a pretty cut-and-dry job of trimming hair to keep it neat, tidy, and presentable. Jay brought in the idea that men’s hair should be an individual expression of himself, and that it should be cut to suit him individually, rather than giving everyone the same thing.
Jay Sebring was born Thomas John Kummer on October 10, 1933. He grew up in a middle class home in Detroit, Michigan. During the Korean War, he joined the Navy, and that’s where he learned to cut hair.
After returning home, he moved to Los Angeles went to cosmetology school. This is when he started going by Jay Sebring, inspired by a car race in Florida. This is a time when men’s hair and women’s hair were two very different things, and never the two should cross. This is where he learned techniques land ideas like cutting the hair to suit the customer’s face.
He had the idea of bringing these women’s techniques to men’s hair. He started shampooing his customer’s hair before cutting, using small hand-held hair driers that were popular in Europe, and using hair spray instead of Brylcreem.
All of this happened alongside what was called “The Peacock Revolution.” For the first time in nearly 200 years, men’s fashion was once again colorful and flamboyant. On Carnaby Street in London, tailors like John Stephen, Lord John, and Mr. Fish created new, unique men’s clothing that was adopted by bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who.
Jay Sebring stood, boldly, at the other end of that, declaring that men should take interest in their appearance. His salon in LA became the hottest place for men, and he began cutting hair at unheard of prices.
I wanted to try to list all the influential celebrities whose hair Jay Sebring cut, but the answer is everyone. Watch any major Hollywood movie of the 1960s, the men were styled by Jay Sebring. Any man who was an influential celebrity in 1960s Los Angeles got his hair done by Jay Sebring, everyone from Frank Sinatra
(reportedly, one of Jay’s custom hair pieces managed to prolong Sinatra’s career by decades)
to Jim Morrison
Yes, that haircut- perhaps one of the most iconic men’s haircuts of all time- was a Jay Sebring work of art. Sincerely, it just fucking breaks my heart at the amount of credit that Jay Sebring simply does not receive for his enormous influence on men’s fashion.
His personal life was, well, kind of messy. While the stereotype of the time (and of today) was that all male hairdressers must be gay, Jay Sebring really, really, really loved women. Srsly the dude FUCKED.
While he fancied himself a playboy with more girlfriends than he could possibly keep track of, one girl did genuinely catch his heart: Sharon Tate.
The two dated very seriously for a while, but Sharon had to take a long-term stint in London for her career while Jay had to stay in Los Angeles for his salon. In London, Sharon met Roman Polanski, and that romantic fate was sealed. In spite of everything, Jay and Sharon remained incredibly close friends. He was sitting with her when their murderers entered her bedroom.
After his death, something deeply disturbing and shocking was found in his home: some whips and basic bondage gear. Yes, he had a kinky side. While to well-versed modern folks a basic taste for kink may seem incredibly tame, to folks in the 60s, it was considered to be something only sick freaks and perverts were into. This lead to incredible rumors about sex cults and weird satanic rituals being the motive for the murders.
This, along with some other factors, led up to Jay’s name being overshadowed in death. At the time of his murder, he had taken on a large amount of debt so that he could expand his business into a shampoo brand and a salon franchise across the US. This business wasn’t able to function without the force of its founder’s personality. Eventually, his salon was sold off.
With Sharon Tate, I feel a tremendous sense of loss think about what could have been. With Jay Sebring, I feel a tremendous sense of loss at what was: a legacy that changed how men take care of themselves forever, overshadowed and ignored by the horror of the Manson story. Jay Sebring is a name that deserves to be talked about for his place the history of men’s fashion, not for how he died.
imo a discord server should be like a breakout room for fandom. like the place to run your wips by your besties or discuss your otp in more detail with a few people who were insane about it on your post or organise events with a handful of trusted mutuals etc etc. if it’s where ALL the fandom activity is going to happen it will inevitably foster a cliquey environment where the fandom is divided into “those in the server” and “those who aren’t”, lurking is disincentivised if not made outright impossible, people who feel uncomfortable joining in conversations and would rather interact with fandom through reblogging etc are largely excluded because there’s no repost mechanism, and the fandom itself becomes an enclosed space so new fans are limited in how much content and meta they can access without having to make the plunge into Joining The In Group, there’s limited scope for interaction between different communities within the same fandom, god it’s just an altogether dogshit stupid idea. what if we moved all fandom activity to really massive private groupchats. STUPID
the children yearn for forums but they forget the good thing about forums was that anyone could browse them at leisure and there was absolutely zero pressure to contribute if you did not want to
imagine if aliens found the dead body of a human being exploded in the vacuum of space and they started making fun of the mutilated corpse calling it “splatter alien” and saying it was the ugliest alien in the whole galexy. and then made stuffed animals of it to sell to their alien kids. that’s what happened on this planet to the blob fish
