Saying Goodbye to The Dean of Hairdressing

by Editorial Director Marianne Dougherty

At the age of 83, Alfred “Deano” Dean was still seeing clients, including KDKA TV’s Lynne Hayes-Freeland at Izzazu Salon in Pittsburgh. Four months ago he stopped coming into the salon, and on January 12 he died of prostate cancer. Deano was nothing if not tenacious. Born in 1926—his father had come to Pittsburgh from the West Indies to work in the steel mills—Deano wanted nothing more than to be a professional dancer. He even came in third in a dance competition at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theatre.  Then he joined the Navy where he began conking (relaxing) the hair of African-American sailors like himself. What he discovered was that he had an affinity for hairdressing, and when he was discharged from the Navy he enrolled at Purdue Beauty Academy in New York City. He worked at a salon in Brooklyn for 22 years but eventually moved back to Pittsburgh because that’s where his family was. Still, he had a hard time getting work there as a hairdresser. For a time he worked at a small black salon in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, but what Deano really wanted was a job at one of the city’s upscale salons. In the mid-1970s the two most important hairdressers in Pittsburgh were Arnold and Robert Zegarelli. When they weren’t doing platform work for Clairol, the brothers worked their magic at the salon in Joseph Hornes Department Store downtown.

“Deano came to see me,” remembers Arnold, who is now the education director at Izzazu. “He was dressed to the nines, and he had a lot of confidence, but we just didn’t have any black clients in those days and I told him so.” Unfazed, Deano told Arnold that he’d bring black clients into the salon. When Arnold asked if he had a clientele, his response was, “No, but I’ll build one.” Robert took one look at Deano and told his brother, “He’s cool. Hire him.” It was a decision neither of them ever regretted. True to his word, Deano attracted so many African-American clients that they had to give him his own room at Joseph Hornes.

Deano came to the salon in a suit and tie with matching shoes and socks every day of his life. “If he wore a green suit, he wore green shoes,” says Arnold. “He and Robert used to have dressing contests. Not hairdressing contests, but contests to see who could out-dress the other.” A sartorial original, Deano also had his own way of talking in rhyme. “I used to tell him how sharp he looked when he came into the salon,” Arnold says. “If I asked him how he thought I looked that day, he’d say ‘Pretty fair for a square.’” Because his skin was so flawless, Deano looked decades younger than he was. “Good black don’t crack,” he’d say to anyone who remarked upon his youthful appearance.

When the salon at Joseph Hornes closed, Arnold, whose brother passed away in 1980, moved on, first to Premier Salon, then to Izzazu, and he took Deano with him. “He used to come to the party I threw at my house every Christmas Eve and hold court, regaling everyone with stories about his travels,” Arnold says. “Deano was not only a great hairdresser but also a great person—loyal and honest, straight as an arrow. We’ll all miss him.”