My mother’s wig making salon in the 1920s

My mother ​owned a beauty salon and wig making business in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville. ​In this photo of the store, the Yiddish sign in the front says shaytlen gemakht —​ wigs made here.

I first saw this photo after my mother died; she’s the woman who’s second from the right. Her name was Edith but everyone called her Etkie. The man at the left is my mother’s brother, Gershon. The woman behind my mother is Gershon’s wife, Frieda, who apparently worked for or with my mother in the store at some point.

The family had immigrated from Lomza, Poland in the early 1900s. My grandfather Max came over first and some years later, his two children Etkie and Gershon boarded a ship in Germany to come to New York and join him. Their mother Chaya didn’t come over ​till later because she was a wigmaker in Poland​. Before Etkie left Poland, her mother had taught her the art of wig making.

My mother would tell me that she made wigs in her salon for Orthodox Jewish women and for women who lost their hair from illness. I would watch her buy the hair from a salesman. She would string the wig up on a long thread knotted at the top and work on it from there.

My mother also provided beauty salon services such as facials, manicures, hair styling and coloring. Her marriage to my father did not work out and they divorced when I was very young.

When I was writing a paper about ​my mother for a college course​, it occurred to me that she was actually quite remarkable, supporting my older sister Gloria, me and my grandfather while running her own business. She was a liberated woman before it was even called that.