‘One thing I’m not cutting back on is my hair’: How SA hairdresser Tricia Hicks stays a cut above
Most are lucky to have one great love, but Tricia Hicks has several – her SANFL legend husband Daryl, their family and her brilliant career spanning seven decades.
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Hair artist Tricia Hicks is a cut above.
In her 66-year career, she has shaped the careers of countless aspiring hairdressers.
They have included no less than 100 apprentices through her business Hair Artistique.
A past president of Intercoiffure Australia, Tricia regards hairdressing as an art form rather than a trade and her husband, SANFL icon Daryl Hicks, has been her greatest champion.
OH, WHAT A NIGHT!
Late December back in ‘63? Not quite. It was October in 1968.
“I had just turned 24 and my aunties all thought I was going to be left on the shelf … and I was thinking ‘They’re not my type, how am I ever going to meet anyone in this place?,” Tricia, who is now 79 years young, recalls.
“Then I looked at the door and there was this young man, with an absolute crew cut and a white shirt with a thin black tie, and I thought ‘he looks really nice’.
Tricia – with her teased-up “sprayed to death” bouffant hairdo – was at the Findon Hotel, where a charity dance was being held.
The Sophisticats, a group of young people, including Tricia, who raised “thousands upon thousands” for the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, were hosting the evening with help from 5KA radio DJ John “Vinnie” Vincent.”
Was it love at first sight for Tricia and Mr He Looks Really Nice? Not quite, because she realised they had already met through a mutual friend at a movie night.
But that gave her an opening line.
Tricia made the first move, telling the young man she recognised him.
“He looked at my little badge and said ‘You’re Tricia Hodgson’ and we got talking,” she recalls. “I said to him ‘You play football, don’t you?’.”
COUPLE GOALS
It was only local footy legend Daryl Hicks who had played in four winning grand finals for Sturt in the SANFL and would, no doubt, have been an AFL champ if South Australia had a side back then.
“I wasn’t a WAG and I didn’t know he was a superhero,” Tricia says. “He knew, from his friend who knew me, that I had a little red sports car.”
Daryl asked Tricia for a date.
“There was a coffee lounge on Jetty Road at Glenelg called The Cave and in those days when you asked a girl out for coffee it was always at about 11.30 at night.”
Footy superhero Daryl had met his match in Tricia, who at was a successful businesswoman running her own hairdressing salon.
CUT TO THE CHASE
But it wasn’t her career by design.
Tricia had never been of those little girls with big dreams of making a name for herself in such a glamorous industry.
She was a top student at St Aloysius College when her parents heard about that a master hairdresser from Germany, Helga Ebbinghaus, had relocated to Adelaide and was searching for an apprentice.
Her father’s thinking was that were Tricia to marry, be widowed or remain single she would always be able to support herself as a hairdresser.
Tricia was 13 and after the September school holidays – by which time she had turned 14 – she never returned to class.
Instead she was schooled in the art of hairdressing and life.
“Fortunately for me, Helga was an amazing mentor,” Tricia says.
“I just grew and blossomed from an awkward kid …”
Helga had opened up a whole new world for her.
Five years later Tricia, who was yet to meet the love of her life, Daryl, had wanderlust.
“I took off at 19 and I remember standing there on the back of a boat, sailing out to Vancouver, Canada, where I literally had to emigrate to be able to work,” Tricia says.
“I thought ‘I’ll go and try and get a job somewhere and then go and get a better one and get a better one after that’. But I then realised, no, that’s the wrong way around – start at the top.”
HERE, THERE AND EVERYWHERE
Tricia landed a job at one of Vancouver’s most prestigious salons, The House of Charles, also styling hair for plays at Queen Elizabeth Theatre.
Next she worked at Henry on the Strand in London when “chunky shoes with mini skirts” were all the rage, before more travel including further training in the art of styling long hair Paris and the Vidal Sassoon Academy.
While UK hairdressers looked to punks on the street for inspiration, for their Parisienne counterparts it was all about creating “couture pompadour”, read: OTT updos.
Both approaches were in line with what Helga had taught Tricia, that hairdressers were artists.
“In the same way that potters use clay and dress designers use fabric, we use hair in that very creative, artistic way,” Tricia says.
Returning to Adelaide she opened her salon Tricia Hodgson Hairstylist in 1967, the year before she and Daryl chatted at the dance.
WEDDED BLISS
Exactly 100 days after their first date Tricia and Darryl wed.
“We have been married for 55 years,” she says, “I had always said I would not marry anyone I didn’t love and he is the love of my life. I just knew that.”
They had five children and Tricia out her career on hold “a little” until they were old enough to be cared for by a nanny several days a week so their mum could return to hairdressing.
She founded Hair Artistique a name designed to express her belief that hairdressers are artists.
Always putting her hand up to style hair for charity parades, Tricia also had a head for business.
At its height, Hair Artistique – which has trained more than 100 apprentices to date – had five salons.
One of them was housed in North Adelaide’s Next Gen gym, which is was founded by Tricia’s daughter Therese in 2001. It is still there today and has high profile long-term clients
.
Not that Tricia will name names, other than to say she once cut tennis star Pat Rafter’s hair.
A leader in her industry, at 50 Tricia became the president of Intercoiffure Australia.
The six-year appointment involved overseas travel to New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Paris.
“I remember standing on the balcony of Intercoiffure’s House of Nations (in Paris) and looking out at designer houses and Chanel,” Tricia says, adding: “I thought ‘Here’s this kid from Adelaide, standing here, going in to discuss where the next congress will be’.
“I felt proud for Adelaide, proud for Australia and that’s how I have always felt because you get much more out of giving than receiving.”
NEXT GEN
Tricia has recently sold Hair Artistique to Jodie Reynolds, who started as an apprentice with the business two decades ago.
“Jody and Tammy are two absolutely beautiful girls and they are outstanding hairdressers,” Tricia says of the two who are taking Hair Artistique into the future. “They understand the culture of the business. It’s client-centred. It’s not about us, it’s about looking after our clients.”
SHY AND RETIRING?
Tricia Hicks may have been the first when she started hairdressing but she definitely isn’t the later now.
“The clue for retirement in a cross word is ‘to withdraw’,” Tricia says, adding: “I’m not sad at all, I’m happy because I’m moving on to do things”.
Things will include spending more precious time with her family and especially Daryl, who has been her greatest campion. He encouraged Tricia to go to uni in her 50s. She holds a Bachelor of Management from Uni SA and also complete a Diploma of Theology at Flinders University.
Currently learning to speak Spanish, Tricia isn’t ruling out more tertiary studies in theology again or history.
“It needs to be something where I have to do exams because I’m a bit of a fluffer if I don’t have a purpose and a goal,” she says.
Tricia also plans to finish an assortment of “projects that have been on the backburner”. They include scrapbooking all the mementos and photos from her career, with help from Daryl.
“Daryl has health issues from a stroke, but when he’s with his grandchildren, or a place where he feels comfortable, he is quite amazing,” she says. “He has been my support and we trust each other totally. And our children and grand children are such a joy.”
TRICIA’S SNIPPETS OF ADVICE
* My favourite hairstyle is an unstructured cut that if you go swimming you can come out and ruffle it with your hands and you’re good to go.
* Long hair, parted in the middle is a great look but everyone’s got it. I love Charlize Theron, who often does the chop and look so fabulous and Katy Perry, who sometimes does crazy things with her hair.
* I heard about a woman saying to her girlfriends that her accountant had been told her to rein in her spending who said “There’s one thing I am not cutting back on and that’s my hair’. She was right. You wear your hair every day. And if you wan to sneak out of the country the first thing you do is change your hair!
* If you’re in this industry never say “I’m just a hairdresser”. No one is just anything. My peers and I fought hard to make hairdressing recognised as a much more professional career. If you have your own salon you are running a business, there’s occupational health and safety involved, you have to be smart and you are also a counsellor to your clients and staff.
* Over my journey I have had my fair share of highs and lows. However, don’t dwell on the lows, bask in the highs and build on them. Education or lack of it, age or sex should not define you. If you have the passion and a dream, you can define yourself.
* I’ve always worked at what I’m doing to be the best and then when the opportunity is there I say “yes, you can take it”.
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