15 Years.
April 26th marks 15 years of parlour!
From our humble beginnings as a single location at the corner of trendy Queen and Ossington, we expanded to include three additional locations in our family - Beaches, Yonge and London - with their own personality and diverse talent. Each salon has incredible creative team of stylists on board to meet and match the energy of each neighbourhood we occupy across Ontario. With our unique blend of community, creativity and educational excellence, we were posed from the beginning to carve out a space in a highly competitive, imaginative industry.
Opening a business during 2009’s Great Recession provided its own set of hardships, but Ossington Avenue was the clear location to open our first salon: it was considered an up and coming street with a tremendous amount of retail potential and the area was primed to expand itself into the daytime, having conquered nighttime entertainment. Parlour was the first of many retail storefronts to emerge amongst the restaurants and bars peppered along Oz, opening the door for more daytime activities beyond food and beverages. Since our early days on Ossington, the street has been named one of the “coolest streets” in the world, due to the culture, community, and varied day to night life on offer - and Parlour has been there every step of the way.
Community has always been an important pillar of Parlour’s ethos - with our roots in both the LGBTQ+ and Green spaces - we’ve always maintained our position as a beacon of inclusivity on Ossington and beyond. The dedication to gender neutral pricing - something that is now an industry standard practice - and fostering a safe, creative and supportive environment to advance the talent of our stylists has been a key to Parlour’s long-term success.
While we have had plenty of talent come through Parlour over our 15 year tenure, our original lineup of five stylists have either stayed on board - Charlotte, our master stylist who specializes in curls, has been with Parlour since the beginning - while others have moved on to create successful businesses of their own: Francis is the owner of Cowlick on Bloor and Sergio opened Rockafellas also located on Ossington.
We want to say a massive THANK YOU to both clients and staff for 15 amazing years of HAIR EXCELLENCE! We look forward to seeing what is in store for us next!
After over a decade, there are too many memories, creatives and industry events to count, but take a walk through memory lane with us in the gallery below:
