Deb Dominic: on positivity and secrets shared in the salon

Deb is at the helm of Hairsmiths on Timberhill, an innovative, award-winning salon based in one of Norwich’s most historic buildings and she’s also a champion for her industry – but more than this, she is an undeniable force for good.

If there is a special place in heaven for women who support women, Deb’s seat is waiting, having never missed an opportunity to raise other women up with her passionate belief that collaboration is better than competition.

Never underestimate the power of a good haircut or a great hairdresser.

Born in Norwich, Deb was an only child who grew up surrounded by other children – her mother was one of 13, so her playmates were her cousins.

“There was just me and my Mum, but I still felt part of this huge family and when you’re part of a big family you are comfortable talking to anyone – which comes in useful when you’re a hairdresser!” she laughed.

Brought up by her mum Rebecca, Deb lived on the Hunworth estate and remembers a lovely childhood full of long walks, cycle rides, reading and adventuring.

“It was a proper rural upbringing, so going to Sheringham where my nanna lived was quite an event,” she said.

“Mum worked so hard to keep us afloat with two or three jobs, but I had an absolutely magical childhood which was all about the time and the love she gave me.

“We didn’t have a television and so I read and read and read: anything I could get my hands on. But before it sounds too wholesome, I did spend a lot of time dreaming about when I could leave home and get a telly – oh, and have a bath whenever I liked!”

Long summers were spent on the beach with her cousins, winters in the nearby woods searching for branches to spray with glitter for Christmas, evenings after school spent playing happily with cousins to a backdrop of her aunts’ convivial chatter.

“There was a real sense of togetherness. I was always surrounded by women – my mum, my nanna, my aunts…” said Deb.

“I used to get off the school bus and go straight round my auntie’s and the women-folk would all be sitting in the garden in their petticoats and bras.

“It felt like the men were in the background, it was the women calling the shots.”

If the women in Debs’ family were calling the shots, there was no doubt who the sergeant major was.

Deb’s maternal grandmother, Ena, was – despite her diminutive size – a powerhouse of a woman who had raised a baker’s dozen of children, loved her diamonds and was still having chocolate body wraps at beauty salons in her 90s.

“My nanna lived in a house in Cremer’s Drift in Sheringham with a Dutch gable end – she collected glass from Parriss Jewellers and it was kept in a cabinet that fascinated us all,” Deb remembers, “and she always wore her diamonds, even when they were too big for her.

“She’d wind wool round her fingers and then put the diamond rings on so they didn’t fall off. She definitely wasn’t one for keeping things for best.

“When it was her birthday, she’d hold these incredible fancy dress parties at The King’s Head in Holt – she’d wear Charleston-style dresses and we’d all surround her like she was the Queen. And she really was the Queen, to us.”

Deb’s delight in sharing her nanna’s fabulous stories radiates from her: “My grandmother claimed to be the last Shannock, but then again she claimed to be a lot of things! She said she’d been Boudicca in another life…

“She was a great storyteller and I used to just lose myself in her tales. We are a family of great embellishers, every story we tell is rolled in glitter.

“My nanna was quite small, but her life was anything but. I absolutely adored her.”

When Deb went to Reepham High School (“before Reepham was posh”) her mum began evening classes, learning French (she moved to France in 2000), reflexology and reiki.

As a result, Deb – along with her mum - had a little more freedom.

“I learned how to cook and I learned what the sound of my mum’s Citroen 2CV was so I could quickly pretend I’d been doing the list of chores she’s left me,” she laughed.

Devouring history at school, she loved learning about World War One and Two, remembering Ena’s tales about a Nazi, shot down above Sheringham, who lived in gardens and was quietly fed and looked after by residents.

“She said no one ever talked about him, but they all knew he was there, but of course it could have been another of her tales!” she laughed.

“And then there was her second husband who she said was the first person to go into Belsen to liberate it…there were lots of stories and I could relate to them at school.”

At 13, Deb got her first job, washing up at the Crawfish Inn in Thursford, cycling there and back for a punishing seven-hour shift and later she worked at The Hunny Bell.

“I worked there when I was doing my GCSEs, for two nights a week and all weekend – I did so badly in my mocks, but pulled it out of the bag for my exams!” she said.

A-levels at Fakenham High followed in history of art and art and it was where Deb finally found her tribe, forming a close-knit gang of five.

“We’d play cards, smoke roll-ups, talk for hours, it was fabulous.”

The assumption was that after A levels she would go to art school and, indeed, Deb won a place at Norwich School of Art and Design (now Norwich University of the Arts).

“I immediately felt as if everyone was much better than me and suddenly the thing I loved doing – painting – was one of lots of different things I was expected to do,” she said.

“The minute my lecturer said: ‘you need to forget everything you did at A-level…’ I thought ‘right, well I’m out’.”

Deb swiftly left NSAD but realised the importance of a back-up plan. After discovering that she could take a course in fashion photography…but only if she had some relevant ‘beauty experience’, she found herself at the doors of City College Norwich.

“I’d never thought once that I might want to do beauty or hairdressing,” she said, “the closest I’d come to it was when my mum’s friend who did hair gave me a perm and hennaed my hair at her house – I looked like a lion.

“I’d experimented with some Directions colours from Head in the Clouds on my hair and I saved up and got highlights, I loved them so much!”

At this point, Deb’s boyfriend of the time had left Norfolk to go to university in Brighton – she visited at weekends. She was 18, and the East Sussex city seemed impossibly glamorous and exciting.

“One weekend I was staying with him and I walked past a Toni and Guy salon and I saw a sign saying they were looking for apprentices: I went in, asked and took one look at me and said: ‘you can start next week’,” she said.

“So I went home, told my mum I was quitting college and moving out, and I took a National Express coach out of Norfolk carrying a rubber plant, a telly with a handle and one bag!”

In Brighton, Deb began the apprenticeship which would change her life in a city filled with opportunities and new friends, a non-stop party central a million miles from sleepy Norfolk.

After staying with her boyfriend, she found a flat and immersed herself in work, play and getting to know her new salon ‘family’ – paid just £30 a week (her rent was £35, so she had a crash course in applying for benefits) she then got down to the serious business of clubbing.

As the relationship that had introduced her to Brighton fizzled out, she enjoyed a new life packed with new experiences and new people.

“There wasn’t much opportunity to go clubbing in Norfolk when you lived in the sticks, so suddenly I was in Brighton and all the girls from the salon were given free VIP entry to the biggest clubs. I’d go out with £1 in my pocket and I wouldn’t even need that,” she said.

“It was an amazing time. I look back now at those three years in Brighton and wonder how I survived it!”

Deb’s words are loaded: undercutting the amazing nights out and the glamour was a relationship which was spiralling out of control: her new boyfriend was violent and unpredictable.

The attacks and rows became increasingly vicious, passed off at work by Deb who would make excuses for bruises: “I always told myself that it wasn’t really that bad…” she said.

But it was that bad. And it got much worse.

During a fight, Deb’s boyfriend threw scalding water at her and left her with severe burns that caused the skin on her arm to effectively melt: covering more than 20 per cent of her body surface area, she went into shock.

“The hospital told me that I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t called for help,” she said.

When she was discharged from hospital six weeks later, the locks on her flat had been changed and her belongings had been disposed of. She returned to Norfolk with nothing.

“I came back with the clothes I was wearing and went home to mum’s,” she said.

Deb doesn’t dwell on what must have been a horrific and life-changing event, merely drawing on her beloved nanna’s words: “She said to me that the world didn’t stop turning because something bad had happened to me. She meant it entirely with love, but it is true. You can let bad things define you, or you can learn from them and go forwards.

“My mum was similarly hard but fair. She wouldn’t let me just wallow at home, her reasoning was that if I was well enough to go to the pub, I was well enough to work!

“And she was right…”

Her former partner was later sentenced to six years in prison for the attack and Deb underwent counselling (“I told them I didn’t have anything to say. And then I talked without drawing a breath for two hours”).

Meanwhile, Norwich’s Toni and Guy branch had no vacancies, so Debs went to work at Byfords in Holt and found her new tribe until an opening was available.

Back with scissors in her hands, Deb was in her element and clients flocked to see her – she continued training at T&G academies in London, moved to a flat in Norwich and became the salon’s most popular stylist.

After several years back in Norwich, Deb, now 25, had got married.

And this is a feature in itself, involving a whirlwind romance, a marriage proposal after three months and a trip to Nigeria to meet the in-laws just before the wedding. The day before the ceremony, Deb, her husband-to-be and other members of the family were car-jacked, led into woodland and threatened with huge machetes and guns. Deb said she was furious rather than frightened, eventually a story was fabricated about being let free in order to get money and they escaped, but only after Deb had rescued her wedding dress from a hedge. Her in-laws cleaned and mended it overnight and it was perfect the next day. She later discovered that the last western couple to be car-jacked had been murdered.

Her (now former) husband urged her to leave Toni and Guy start her own business.

“I don’t think I really needed anyone to tell me what to do, but it was the final push to get the ball rolling. A salon came up at Woburn Court in Norwich, it was perfect, I handed my notice in and the journey began!”

Hairsmiths opened in 2011: “I opened my business when all I could do was cut hair. I had imposter syndrome when it came to opening my own business – I thought I wasn’t good enough at maths, I wouldn’t be able to cope.

“But then I realised: if I didn’t know how to do something, I’d just find out how to do it and then I’d know. And I did. And it worked.”

Starting with five styling positions, Hairsmiths has grown, winning awards, clients and plaudits along the way, creating waves (sometimes literally) in the wedding industry and working at more than 10 seasons at London Fashion Week backstage and Milan Fashion Week in 2018.

In between opening her first salon and moving it to Timberhill, Deb separated from her husband and met her partner of 11 years Dean at Norwich Pride at an after-party in The Loft: she was dancing barefoot to Beyonce and several tequilas later, he told her: “this’ll be one to tell the grandkids one day!”

They are, she says, polar opposites, but as we all know, opposites attract.

“He is the solid to my chaotic and describes himself as being as precise as a laser beam while I’m explosive – but dazzling! – like a firework!” she laughs.

“Dean is a total hidden-layers kind of chap: business suits and power points by day, DJing in Gonzos for events I’ve thrown in the evening. He’s also my go-to model for shoots when we need a fella!

“He’s not conventional, we’re not a conventional couple but buying a house, having Dali and buying cushions together is the closest I’ve ever been to conventional!

Joined by daughter Dali in 2014, the pair discovered they were in the same club in Brighton in the 1990s and could have met years earlier.

“But I think things happen for a reason,” Deb said of Dean, who works in e-commerce and also once had a DJ residency with Ministry of Sound in his 20s.

Family matriarch Ena died at the ripe old age of 99 just three months before Dali Ena was born, but Deb is making sure she will never be forgotten by passing on the stories which once filled her with warmth and belonging and now do the same for her daughter.

“Dali is incredible, so full of beans. From the minute she was born until being the six-year-old she is now, she’s always been happy and joyful,” said Deb.

“My mum took me to her cleaning jobs when I was little and taught me what hard graft was. I bring Dali to the salon and before that, when I needed to have business meetings, I took her to those, too.

“I was sick of apologising for having a child and not being able to find care for her while people could try and persuade me to give them money. So I stopped saying sorry and starting bringing Dali: you want my business? I come with this small person.

“I do have wonderful support from Dean, from my family, from my friends, from Zowie her godmother, but I don’t resent having her by my side when I can, I enjoy it.

“Dali had her first stall at the salon recently: she was offering glitter tattoos. And not many kids her age can say they’ve been invited to the front row of London Fashion Week and sat next to Hilary Alexander…!”

Amid the excitement of setting up in a new, larger home – with pop-up residences from local independent traders and lots of big plans – Covid struck and the timetable flew out of the window leaving her feeling like a ship without a rudder.

“I enjoyed more time with Dean and Dali, but I eat, sleep and breathe my business and I missed it. I used to go in on my own and just walk around talking to myself – bit sad – and then I went into action. Social media. Campaigning for the industry. Calls with clients. Training. A socially-distant wedding fair,” she said.

“It was just as much for me as it was for anyone else. It was amazing to get back to the salon and see people – really emotional, actually. You realise that in many ways you are the job.”

The list of Deb’s achievements is almost as long as her list of future plans: there was her invitation to the Southwood Social Hub, a community of businesswomen across the UK run by Norfolk-based Hayley Southwood, bringing the first hairdressing salon to the Norwich Chamber of Commerce, the opening of a training base for Wella, offering opportunities to young would-be stylists and talks for – amongst others – Women of the City magazine.

But at the heart of it all, is the magical power of a hair cut, although as everyone knows, visiting a salon is never just about a hair cut.

Hairdressing is an intimate, personal moment – if a client trusts you with their hair, they are likely to trust you with their secrets, too. And Deb is a great keeper of secrets.

“People often tell you secrets because you’re safe to tell and there’s no one else they can speak to. You become a confidante, someone who they can trust – and that is such a privilege and an honour,” she said.

“You end up learning so much about people and life and offering your advice, too, whether it be about a situation or what mascara is waterproof. Sometimes we cry with laughter, sometimes we cry with sadness.

“I am genuinely interested in people and I am fascinated by their stories and what we talk about. I often leave the salon feeling like I’ve been with friends all day.

“And I still love knowing that I can make something really special happen just by moving my hands – a bit like a magician!”

To finish, I ask Deb – whose salon houses three self-employed stylists, two beauticians and seven full-time members of staff - for one piece of advice regarding hair.

“We see people come in who are in a highly-emotional state who want to make a drastic change to the way they look and we need to make sure they’re in the right place before we lift the scissors,” she said.

“So I say: ‘why don’t we have a think before we do anything radical? Because being sad is one thing, but being sad with a really drastic haircut is quite another…’

“Oh, and don’t listen to anyone who tells you you’re too old for long hair. I’m all about long hair and big earrings – anyone who knows me knows you can tell how I’m feeling by the size of my earrings. The bigger they are, the more cheerful I am.”

Based on that, Deb may need two wheelbarrows, pronto.

Hairsmiths is at 33 Timberhill, Norwich, hairsmiths.co.uk 01603 305555.