Down a side street in Southwark sits a hairdressers' that would make most modern stylists run screaming. Nestled within the walls of the Cut & Clipper salon is Nina's Hair Parlour, Britain's first vintage hair salon. Scattered around the shop are pictures of immaculately coiffed starlets - Lauren Bacall, Gene Tierney and Olivia de Havilland - all shampooed and set to within an inch of their lives. Original hood dryers bulge ominously from the walls and sinister gas-heated tongs from the 1920s rest on art deco cabinets packed with pillbox hats. Edith Piaf trills softly in the background. It is like Toni & Guy never existed.

"It's easy to get the retro clothes," says Nina - known professionally as Nina the Head Dresser - "but the retro hair and makeup is a skill that needs to be learned." A hairdresser for the past 15 years, Butkovich-Budden spotted a gap in the market after helping women at rockabilly and burlesque clubs attend to their tresses.

"I started doing it for friends and performers, and then more and more 'regular' people became interested in it." Last year she began specialising in retro bouffants, helping create vintage hair designs for the Young Vic theatre, and offering one-to-one sessions with private clients - who range from students and office workers to an air hostess from Dubai who flies over specifically to see her. Then there's the couple whose lives revolve entirely around the 1940s; "she's a land girl and he's a soldier from 1943," says Butkovich-Budden. With a four-month waiting list for the intensive four-hour classes (which come complete with drinks and chocolates), Butkovich-Budden teaches her customers hair and makeup styles of their choosing. "People bring in three pictures of the styles they would like to have. The most popular are Rita Hayworth, Traci Lords in Cry-Baby, oh, and Bettie Page. Always the Bettie Page fringe!"

Today Vancouver-born performer Alisa is in Butkovich-Budden's hotseat, having her bleached hair rolled and curled. Despite only living in Britain for only eight months, Alisa is already a devoted customer. "Nina's the only person who'll let me kill my hair with bleach! Other hairdressers will preach at me and tell me I'm ruining my hair, but Nina gets it. She knows exactly what I want." And what Alisa wants is big, bold and beautiful 1950s hair and makeup; "I love the cartoonish femininity of it. Growing up in Vancouver, everyone wears thick fleeces and sweaters all the time, so I rebelled by wearing seamed stockings and looking like this!"

The retro look isn't restricted to showgirls, as Helen Barrell, a librarian based in Birmingham, proves. "I've never been the kind of person to be dictated to about anything - I put my hair in vintage rolls because it looks great and suits me," says Barrell. "I don't know why we're told that during the day your makeup should be 'natural'. What's wrong with lots of eyeliner?" In fact, Barrell's look is comparatively low-maintenance. She only spends five minutes a day on hair and makeup, saving time by washing her hair just once a week - using setting lotion means it doesn't get greasy as quickly. "Modern girls apparently wash their hair every day and use their straighteners each morning," she says, apparently shocked by this. "I just fold my hair over and pin it!"

At size 20, Barrell has also found that vintage clothing is far more flattering to her shape. "I'm blessed with curves and 50s dresses allow for an adult female figure with hips, a waist and a bust." She is also a devotee of that oft-reviled vintage relic - "shapewear" girdles and corsets. "If you're wearing vintage clothes, you may as well wear vintage underwear," she says. "Foundation wear is wonderful stuff, and it annoys me that some feminists seem to think that it's evil. Yes, I've accepted my size, but at the same time, it's really great to have these contraptions made of strong elastic which give you a smooth line. If you wear a bra to support your boobs," says Barrell, "why not wear something to support your tummy?"

One woman who knows good girdles is Katie Halford, the founder of vintage-inspired pants emporium What Katie Did. After the boutique she was working for closed down, Halford was desperate to get her hands on cheap seamed stockings again, so contacted her former employer's suppliers. Soon, she was running her own mail-order service. "I wasn't really thinking about other women when I started What Katie Did," says Halford, "I was just thinking about myself!" Now the fully fashioned website - complete with models with hair styled by Nina - stocks everything from bullet bras, girdles and corsets to a large range of hosiery. "The popularity of vintage style seems to be growing daily," says Halford. "Our bullet bra is the most popular as no one else manufactures them in Europe. Wearing one is the easiest way to get a retro-looking silhouette."

In this instance, "retro silhouette" means the pointy, poke-your-eyes-out chest of a 1950s sweater girl. "I think current notions of beauty are really rather bizarre," says Halford. "Women are having breast implants but doing the best they can to get rid of the rest of their curves. It really doesn't make sense."

Paradoxically, for a look born before the days of PCs, the internet is a driving force behind the scene. Online communities have formed - including a message board on the What Katie Did website, full of women sharing tips. "I really don't think that the vintage look would be so big without the internet," notes Halford. "When I was growing up in Plymouth we had one vintage shop, one alternative club and that was it. Now you can shop for vintage clothes world wide."

Burlesque artist Millie Dollar first asked her mother for help with creating 1940s hairstyles, but when she couldn't show her more than a simple chignon, she turned to the net. "I was on my own really, but there are loads of sites to help you and you can always Google it. I'm now skilled enough at victory rolls and curls to whip them up quickly, but at first it takes a lot longer till you're practised." As well as full vintage hair, Millie won't leave her house without a trademark smear of post-box red on her lips, but it wasn't always that way. "I went through that dreadful teenage stage that everyone goes through where I didn't bother much with fashion, and wore baggy clothes to hide myself." A chance viewing of the classic 1953 musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes changed all that. "The women looked perfect in every scene; I wanted to look as graceful as them - they just oozed glamour, every outfit was perfectly made with such luxurious fabrics and styled in such an amazing way." Millie then bleached her hair in homage to one of the film's stars, Marilyn Monroe. "Who doesn't want to look like Marilyn?" she says.

 

Well, Cambridge-based project manager Elizabeth Stevenson, for one - although her style was also shaped by the film. "I always preferred Jane Russell as Dorothy to Marilyn's Lorelei," Stevenson says. "She had a knowing wryness about her. I have a copy of the top she wore in the swimming-pool scene from Miss Selfridge, circa 1983. It no longer does up but I can't bear to part with it!" Saturday afternoon double-bill matinees also introduced Stevenson to the likes of Ava Gardner, Liz Taylor and Gina Lollobrigida, and she's now been sporting the vintage look for more than a quarter of a century. Her recent wedding was no exception and was tiki-themed - 40s look - with every attendee wearing period outfits.

While these women may look like they've just stepped out of a post-war, pin-up magazine, none of them has the slightest desire to be whisked back in time and live the real vintage life. "I don't live in the past," says Stevenson. "I live now - with the comforts of modern life enhanced by some of the things that I love about the past. I enjoy my career and empowerment, which is all possible thanks to a lot of other women's efforts to secure equality." Barrell is in agreement, "I really wouldn't have wanted to live in the 1940s. Rationing would have been bad enough, but why on earth would I want to sleep in a bomb shelter?".