Trade Names: Newspapers wouldn't run the ad - "Feel like having it off" - for Ireland's first unisex salon when it opened in 1971. But Herman's Klipjoint survived. Rose Doyle talks to the man behind the scissors

In the beginning there was Herman of Holland, a talented young hairdresser in demand in the l960s salons of Grafton Street and environs.

Then, in the flash and razzmatazz that was the start of the 1970s, there was Herman's Klipjoint, over the China Showrooms on Grafton Street, the country's very first unisex hairdressing shop, where no appointment was necessary and where good hairdressing didn't cost the earth.

Herman's Klipjoint opened in Grafton Street in 1971. It was a shop, he says, not a salon. His ad with the slogan "Feel like having it off?" was refused by newspapers. "We were the birth of unisex," he says, "people said it wouldn't work, that it wasn't possible to have a man and woman sitting side-by-side having their hair cut. But it did work, from the very start too. We had queues down as far as Switzers (now Brown Thomas). I played Thin Lizzy's Whiskey in the Jar from 10 in the morning 'til 10 at night.

"Our logo was designed by Jim Fitzpatrick and we advertised great sounds and great prices. We had chocolate brown walls and orange chairs, which was unheard of. We did the hair for all the Noel Pearson productions, from Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat to Cabaret. Phil Lynott came in and we gave him a farewell party before he went to London for Top of the Pops. He defined the early 1970s too. I followed a dream, as my daughter tells me now!"

Between 1971 and now, there's been a life well-lived, a passion for hairdressing, reinvention, moving on and, always, the principle that the customer comes first, second and third. And behind it all there's been Herman Koster, born in Rotterdam, Holland as the second World War came to an end, a troubadour with scissors in hand who arrived in Dublin in 1959.

"The only Dutch people here then were graphic artists," Herman remembers, "and there was no good coffee to be had at all. I would walk a mile-and-a-half looking for a decent cup . . ."

He's affable beyond belief, and entertaining to boot. His memory's prodigious, full of anecdote and colour and insightful too. When he opened Herman's Klipjoint, it was in response to a need he saw for a hairdressers which would deliver style and value, cut through the mystique and salon pretensions of the time. When he consolidated in the 1980s it was to concentrate on colour, cut and training a new crop of hairdressers. By the 1990s, when everywhere was unisex, he'd gone back to barbering, to what he calls "the long forgotten tonsorial art of shaving".

In between he'd worked on beehives and piled-up curls, wash'n'wear haircuts and the shaggy look, Afro styles and spikes and colouring of all sorts. Through it all he's operated his own MBE. "Management by Encouragement," he explains, "it's the only way."

Herman's is still on Grafton Street, a more conventional hair salon now than it used to be. Most of his time these days is spent in his St Stephen's Green Centre barber shop, Knights of the Green.

He was a teenage adventurer with a hairdressing qualification which took him everywhere. The Dublin he arrived in aged 20 in 1959 was, he says, " a very small city, everything within walking distance. Stillorgan was still a place of fields and meadows." He fell into the early folk culture of the time, his Van Dyke beard a familiar sight in places like Nearys and the Coffee Inn.

"I lived in a succession of small flats where the walls were so damp there were mushrooms growing in them," he roars with laughter, "and there was no magic in that, I can tell you! So instead of going home after work I went to the pubs and mixed with the student life."

He remembers 1960s Dublin looking to London for style guidance. "Mary from Cavan became Monique of Bond Street when she became a stylist, that sort of thing. I was called a Continental and had to sign up every six months in the aliens office." He worked first of all in Leons, at the top of Grafton Street, and later with Jacqmal of Mayfair in Dawson Street. Then he moved on, scissors in hand, across Europe, adventuring, cutting hair on the beaches of Greece, coming and going through the 1960s. He wrote, too, newspaper columns of advice on hair care. Ahead of the posse even then, he wrote in praise of home treatments, advocating hair "foods" like marrowbone oil, olive oil, eggs, lemon and beer.

In between, he'd met Brenda, his wife to be and mother of their three children. "A wonderful woman," he says, "I met her in that ballroom of romance, the CIÉ Ballroom in Marlborough Street! She's always been a support to me in my business and a wonderful mother."

By the beginning of the 1970s he had a clear view of "the enormous potential in Ireland to create something different, to reinvent the point of hairdressing salons, do away with the mystique and falseness and create an honest-to-God decent service where personal attention was important and available to all, not just those with loads of money."

In the 12 months of l971 Herman Koster opened three outlets. The first, in Dundrum Shopping Centre, was called Herman's Hair Care, the second was Grafton Street and the third in Galway Shopping Centre.

"Everyone thought I was utterly and totally nuts," he says, "and it's only now I realise that I was. I'd get up at 5.30 a.m., be on the road at 6 a.m. and open the Galway shop by 9 a.m. I did that once a week until it was established, as well as running my other two places."

He opened, too, in Pat Quinn's Sports Hotel in Kilternan, in Kimmage Shopping Centre and in Dún Laoghaire. "One day you realise you're deluding yourself," he says, "and that you can't be everywhere. If I'd had a laptop and mobile and fax I'd have had 24 shops. But what I did in the 1980s was spend time consolidating." After Hermans became All Ireland Irish Hairdressing Champions in 1981, he concentrated on training - "what I used to call growing your own roses - and on the things that really mattered, like colour and cutting". The decade, he says, was one in which more was learned about the structure and texture of hair than had been learned in 100 years. Old, strong chemicals disappeared and a new education began. But it was also a time when attracting juniors was difficult.

Herman is adamant that hairdressing is a career, not a job, and feels strongly that hairdressing is still not properly legislated for. "I campaigned for 30 years for registration and proper training schemes. Things are changing at last. There are strong people running the Irish Hairdressers Federation and there's proper guidance on health and safety. Guidance for trainees is really coming on too."

His outlets these days are in St Stephen's Green Shopping Centre, Grafton Street, Ballinteer and Dundrum Shopping Centres. But now, the wheel coming full circle, he's getting ready to open in the new Dundrum Town Centre. "It's to do with going back and reinventing yourself," he says, "nothing stays the same but the principles remain. Fashions change, as they say, but style remains. We will go on! We've had many people imitating our ideas but we've survived. I've tried to teach my children that they should find a job they like so as they don't have to work every day of their lives. Doing something you like isn't work at all."

By that criteria Herman Koster hasn't worked a day in his life - and loved every minute of it.