Mysterious name part of the plan

[attach]5706[/attach]Although the name Babs + Lou could indicate otherwise, Dawn Larson’s hair salon is a one-woman show named after her grandmothers Barbara and Louise.

“I like a little mystery so I didn’t want to name it something like ‘And Hair We Are’ like so many salons do,” she says. “A lot of people come in and give me some flack for not even saying that it’s a hair salon on the window or anything but mystery is a good thing and I love that people have to ask me about it and they always ask, ‘Are you Babs?’ ”

Before she opened Babs + Lou on Dundas Street West near Bloor Street West in May last year, Larson had been running another salon, Frock Head, in the basement of Frock on Roncesvalles Avenue. But after going to see her current building on a whim, she says there was no going back.

“It was pretty serendipitous actually. I had outgrown my space a little bit,” she says, adding she lives upstairs of her new salon. “I feel like this part of Dundas has got some potential going for it. I think it’s affordable still and there’s so many people moving into this neighbourhood.”

She says being located between Roncesvalles Village and The Junction is also the handiest place she’s ever lived since everything she needs is within walking distance.

Larson first decided to go to hair dressing school because she was unsure of what she wanted to study in university but didn’t want to spend the year doing nothing.

“It wasn’t even something I had considered, but then I decided to go to hair school and I remember convincing my parents saying ‘it’s a trade and I’ll always have it and it’s something to fall back on and I can do it anywhere in the world,’ ” she says.

“Then I went to school and I loved it and actually, I have to say the longer I do it the more I love it and I’ve been doing it for 18 years or something now.”

One of her biggest career accomplishments, she says, was reestablishing a client base after moving to Toronto from Edmonton after working in the city for 10 years.

“I had to really start from scratch because the thing about hair dressing is that you can do it anywhere but it’s not like your clients follow you across the country,” she says.

Although running the business on her own has its advantages like having flexible hours and giving customers a personalized one-on-one service, she says it also means she doesn’t change her hair colour and cut as often as she’d like.

“I always say I’m like the mechanic with the broken down car because he doesn’t have time to get his own car fixed because I actually have to take time off work to go get my own hair done,” she says, adding she does style it differently on a daily basis.

“So I really do try to respect people’s time when they are here and I try not to overbook myself.”