Glastonbury 2023: Hair salons and beauty bars – how festival has gone from grime to glam
There once was a time, not so long ago, that the only type of bath you’d get at Glastonbury would be a mud bath.
Over five or six days, the best the average hygienic camper might hope for was a tap rinse or wet-wipe wash and a hide-all bucket hat – but really, anyone getting the true Worthy Farm festival experience had to leave grand notions of looking glamorous back at home.
Photographs of particularly wet and grimy years – such as 2005, when some tents were submerged – were part and parcel of the Glastonbury experience, as were sensible waterproofs, sturdy boots, and long-drop toilet horror stories.
We don’t want to jinx it, but it’s been a long time since Glastonbury-goers spent their weekend drenched in mud, like in 1998…
Now, however, while the toilets might still be an ordeal, the festival looks very different. Thank Kate Moss and her micro shorts. And Sienna Miller and her boho belts, Alexa Chung and her PVC skinnies. It started with the celebs, and filtered out to the 200,000-ish non-famouses who now attend each year.
Glastonbury has moved with the times, and it’s not just about the outfits. In 2023, festival-goers might be sleeping in tents, but are able to look like they just stepped out of a salon, thanks to hairdressing and beauty pop-ups on site.
At the Blowfest stall, not far from the Pyramid stage, you can treat yourself to anything from a simple hair wash for £15 to a creative blow-dry and styling for £60. Bookings opened in March – and just like the sale for tickets for the festival itself, demand was so high that the website crashed.
On site, the queue had started to build by 8.30am on Friday.
Natalie Walton, 29, from Kent, joined the line snaking outside to get her hair washed.
“There’s no better feeling as a girl,” she told Sky News. “I just hate the feeling of sweat in my hair… there should be more tents [like this], I think, personally. There’s so many girls here that need their hair done.”
At home, Natalie straightens her hair every day – and sleeping in a tent means too many kinks.
“I’ve been once before and I got it last year as well,” she said. “I appreciate it.”
Elton John and Lizzo (below) are among the glam stars playing this year. Pic: AP
Because of social media, festival-goers want to look their best. Gone are the mobile phone-less days, when what went on at Glastonbury stayed at Glastonbury.
But it’s partly down to the changing weather, too. It’s been a few years since Glastonbury has seen the torrential downpours and mud-wading of particularly rain years such as 1997 and 2005. Sunshine equals summer clothes and, for most, better hair.
For Amy Roberts, 27, from Liverpool, this is her fifth time at the festival. At home, she only washes her hair once a week – but Glastonbury requires more effort.
“I woke up this morning and there were spiders in it and everything,” she said. “I’m not really a glamour person, but… I want to look nice. I don’t want to look a mess.
“The first time I came here I was only 19, I didn’t wash my hair… it was on and off raining, [my hair] was awful.”
Other Glastonbury-goers choose to get clean without the help of the experts
Rachel Bacon, who runs the stall, is here for the second year after huge demand in 2022. The salon offers mainly washes and blow-drying, but can include trims as well and a barber’s service.
“Friday and Saturday will always be fairly busy,” she said. “I think last Saturday [in 2022], people waited about up to three hours just to get a hair wash.
“I think with the way that life is changing, with social media and camera phones and the technology that we’ve got now, everybody wants to look good all the time to be able to take photos and post them online. So if that includes being at a festival and having fabulous hair you just just go with it.”
Read more from Glastonbury:
Foo Fighters will be a hard act to beat after their unexpected festival performance
Arctic Monkeys will play after all – but who are The Churnups?
Blowfest even had clients on the first official day of the festival on Wednesday – when music fans had only just left their homes and clean bathrooms – after rain earlier in the day.
“People just wanted to come in and dry their hair off or restraighten it,” Rachel said, “even on Wednesday”.
While some may say hair washing and blow-dries are a world away from the Glastonbury of old, the demand is there – and what’s wrong with looking your best?
“There’s a bit of a mixed feeling towards, you know, ‘oh, it’s not a hippie festival anymore if people are going to get hair washed’,” Rachel said. “But everybody’s individual and everybody wants their own thing.”
Angelina Jolie says although she appreciates being an artist, she would prefer for her legacy to be “a good mother” and to be known for her “belief in equality and human rights”.
The Oscar-winning actress stars as Maria Callas in the new Pablo Larrain film about the opera singer’s life.
Pic: StudioCanal
She has called Maria “the hardest” and “most challenging” role she has had in her career and put months of preparation into immersing herself into the world of opera.
Jolie, who recently reached a divorce settlement with actor Brad Pitt, told Sky News: “To be very candid, it was the therapy I didn’t realise I needed. I had no idea how much I was holding in and not letting out.
“So, the challenge wasn’t the technical [side of opera], it was an emotional experience to find my voice, to be in my body, to express. You have to give every single part of yourself.”
The biopic combines the voice of the Maleficent actress with recordings of Maria Callas.
Jolie believes it “would be a crime to not have [Callas’] voice through this because, in many ways, she is very present in this film”.
Who was Maria Callas?
Born in New York in 1923, Maria Callas was the daughter of Greek immigrants who moved back to Athens at the age of 13 with her mother and sister.
After enrolling at the Athens Conservatory, she made her professional debut at 17 and went on to become one of the most famous faces of opera, travelling around the world and performing at Covent Garden in London, The Met in New York and La Scala in Milan.
Callas’s final operatic performance took place at Covent Garden in 1965 when she was 41 but she continued to work conducting master classes at Juilliard School, doing concert tours and starring in the 1969 film Medea.
Written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, Maria focuses on the artist’s final years in the 1970s when she moved to Paris and disappeared from public view.
She died on 16 September 1977 at the age of 53.
Pic: StudioCanal
Jolie on changing motivations as an actor
Maria follows the life of an artist fully consumed by the art she creates and even remarks that “happiness never developed a beautiful melody”.
Reflecting on her own life in the spotlight, Jolie said she noticed her own career motivations change over the years.
“There’s this kind of study of being human that we do when we create, and we communicate with an audience because our work is not in isolation – it’s a connection.
“I think when I was younger, I had different questions about being human and different feelings and now as I’ve gotten older, I understand some things and now I have different questions.
“It’s a matter of life, right? And so maybe that’s interesting that this now is a character really contemplating death and really contemplating the toll of certain things in life that I, of course, couldn’t have understood in my 20s”.
Jolie at the New York Film Festival in September with three of her children (L-R) Pax, Zahara and Maddox. Pic: AP
A family affair
Two of Jolie’s children, Maddox and Pax, took on production assistant roles during the filming of Maria and witnessed their mother perform opera for the first time in public.
She says the film allowed them to create new experiences together and for her children to see her approach to playing a difficult role.
“Everyone in my home, we all give each other space to be who we are and we’re all different.
“I’m the mom, but I’m also an artist and a person and so my family has been very kind and gives me their understanding. They make fun of me, and they support me and just as you’d hope it would be.”
She adds: “When you play somebody who is dealing with so much pain, it’s very important to come home to some kindness.”
Maria is in cinemas now.
Tom Holland’s dad has confirmed his son’s engagement to Zendaya – revealing how the 28-year-old meticulously planned the proposal.
Zendaya, also 28, sparked engagement rumours when she attended last Sunday’s Golden Globes wearing a sparkling diamond on her ring finger.
Neither star has publicly addressed the rumours but Tom’s comedian father, Dominic Holland, has now confirmed the pair are set to wed.
He wrote in a post on his Patreon account: “Tom, as you know by now was very incredibly well prepared. He had purchased a ring.
“He had spoken with her father and gained permission to propose to his daughter.”
“Tom had everything planned out… When, where, how, what to say, what to wear,” he added.
Zendaya arrived at the Golden Globes with a noticeable piece of new jewellery. Pic: Invision/AP
Dominic also noted that while most men worry about being able to afford an engagement ring, he suspects his actor son was “more concerned with the stone, its size and clarity, its housing, which jeweller”.
Tom and Zendaya met on the set of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2016, when they played the titular hero and his love interest MJ, respectively. Their romance was confirmed in 2021.
In his post, Tom’s father admitted fears over whether being in the spotlight could put a strain on the couple’s relationship.
He wrote: “I do fret that their combined stardom will amplify their spotlight and the commensurate demands on them and yet they continually confound me by handling everything with aplomb.”
“And even though show business is a messy place for relationships and particularly so for famous couples as they crash and burn in public and are too numerous to mention […] yet somehow right at the same time, I am completely confident they will make a successful union.”
More entertainment news:
Paris Hilton’s home destroyed in fires
RuPaul pays tribute to The Vivienne
Zendaya rose to fame after landing a role in Disney sitcom Shake It Up, and became a household name after starring in Euphoria.
Holland – who has starred in three Spider-Man films opposite his now-fiancée – made his stage debut in Billy Elliot the Musical in 2008.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports9 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports3 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business2 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway