Mr J. McLaren Thomson, president of the National Hairdressers’ Federation, said yesterday that hairdressing was entering a “golden age,” when no bald men would be seen and women would have a hair style a day in a colour to match their shoes, handbags, or gloves. “People at the end of this century will be hair conscious as never before,” he said.

Mr Thomson, of mid-Lanark, who was giving his presidential address at the federation’s annual conference at Great Yarmouth, said that hair colouring would increase in scope and application. The time would come – possibly by 1999 – when every woman would be using some form of hair cosmetics – and so would most men.

By the end of the century, he said, women would probably have a collection of fashion wigs to wear with special dresses for gala occasions and wig-making would be restored as a major part of the hairdressing craft. There will be no bald men or women. Medical science will have provided a drug to stimulate hair growth.”

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As far as styles were concerned, short hair would be universal for men and women “because of the need to wear space helmets over the head”.

He asked delegates to help to establish the National Apprenticeship Council for hairdressing throughout Britain, so that the traditional way of entering the craft by indentured apprenticeship would become generally recognised.

The conference carried a motion urging the federation to establish its own artistic group to co-ordinate the work and activities of area artistic groups. Mr F. Bullock (Macclesfield), who proposed the motion, wanted a man on holiday to be able to walk into a hairdresser’s at the seaside and get the same haircut he would get at home. There should be standards, he said, apart from hairdressers creating their own styles.