Rose Evansky

Rose Evansky, née Rose Lerner (30 May 1922 – 21 November 2016) was a British hairdresser notable for introducing the "blow dry" or "blow wave" technique of hairstyling.

Early life Evansky was born in Worms, Germany on 30 May 1922, to a Jewish family who were immigrants from Poland. Her father was sent to Dachau concentration camp in 1938, and Rose was one of the last children to be sent to Britain from Germany on the Kindertransport trains.

Hairstyling technique In 1962, from her salon window, Evansky noticed a barber using a powerful new hand-held dryer—together with a hairbrush—to smooth a man's hair. A little while later she was spotted trying it in her salon (on a Mrs. Hay) by Clare Rendlesham who set about marketing this blow-wave which worked on straight hair as well. Within a year, all the leading stylists in Mayfair, London offered it. This was quite a step up from her early beginnings as an apprentice working for Adolf Cohen of Whitechapel Road, known as the "professor" of the hairdressing trade, who also trained Vidal Sassoon.

Reaching Mayfair had been an achievement. Rose's family fled antisemitism in Poland after the first world war to settle in Germany, but under Nazi rule Rose's father, Max Lerner, was sent to Dachau in 1938. Her brother Heine who was always known as Harry in England (he refused to acknowledge his German name), escaped on the kindertransport at the age of 13 and went around all the relatives to arrange sponsorship, managing first to get their father Max to England and then his older sister Rose and their mother. She was 16 and spoke only Yiddish and German when she boarded one of the last kindertransport trains to safety in the UK.