Working Class and Creative Wellbeing
by Tamara Cincik
Growing up, I would read Harper’s and Queen and Vogue from the reception area of one of my parents’ hairdressing salons and inevitably pore over the luxury estate agent advertising in the back end of the magazines, trying to imagine living in a large house with endless sunshine, perhaps a pool, a vast lawn and even tennis courts. These houses of aspiration were very different from where I grew up, in a London suburb in a council flat that came with the salon on a shopping precinct, built along with the rest of the estate, to house blitzed out Londoners after WW2.
A young Tamara outside her parents hairdressing salon Credit: Tamara Cincik
My parents were both young. Dad is an immigrant from Turkiye, who left home aged 11 to work in Istanbul alongside an elder brother. Dad did quite well for himself in Turkiye’s capital city, starting from nothing in a world where child exploitation and beatings from bosses were the norm. He was working at a top salon and could easily have built a good life there. He came here as his two brothers, whom he had grown up with in Istanbul were here. As boy meets girl, my Dad worked with my Mum who was just 18 in a salon in Berkeley Square and they got married on her 19th birthday. So far, so young.
Dad somehow had saved £1000, clearly not paying it on rent, as they lived in a tiny bedsit in Queensway on the road were Lily Langtry, Edward vii’s mistress had lived in somewhat greater splendour than their room which was smaller than a galley kitchen, with no private loo or bathroom. While Dad shared a tailor with Jimi Hendrix, and Mum was wearing Biba, obviously both looking rather fabulous, it was clear they needed more room, so they bought a salon in a council estate called South Oxhey, then run by the Greater London Authority built on old golf courses and the site of a manor house, both having never lived there before, as it came with a flat. And so it was that aged 6 months I moved in with my mother who had decanted from the bedsit when heavily pregnant with me, to her parents’ in Enfield.
Aristotle purportedly said: “Give me the child until he is 7 and I will give you the man,” (girls obviously not having much of a say in Ancient Greece). Aged 7, I was already helping on reception in the salon after school, some Saturdays or in the holidays, by then we had two. I learnt never to say no to a client, as a client with both a magazine on their lap and a cup of tea in their hand was happier to wait than a client with none; and a client turned away was likely to go to a rival and never return. If we went out for dinner, and passed salons, we would check their pricing, number of seats, fittings. My uncles had salons, my Dad’s friends either owned salons, take-aways, or restaurants. By 13 I was a Saturday girl in my Dad’s last salon, at the end of the Metroland line, where the genteel suburbs meet the golf club middle classes. One Saturday, just as we were closing, a woman came in asking for highlights. I knew this was 90 minutes and I also knew that if we took that booking, this meant all the other clients were our profit margin, as one highlights booking covered running costs. So I said yes and sat reading a book, while my Dad worked his magic, and a passing trade query became a regular client. The conversion all businesses work hard for.
I have always seen retail as a work of magic, hairdressing takes as much training as becoming a doctor (did you know that? But then imagine if they didn’t and you had someone untrained covering your head with bleach or perm lotion). If you elevate someone by giving them your attention and time, making them feel and look better about themselves, they will leave their heads held a little higher, their mood a little brighter, who knows what they will achieve. Many corner shops have seats for customers whose legs might ache to sit and chat. In increasingly isolated societies - social media is not making us more social - we need those rhythms of the day where we see people, connect, and have a few passing pleasantries. Bricks and mortar retail offer that.
I do not see growing up on a council estate in a shopping precinct as a reason to feel the world owes me anything, I see it as a badge of honour, as if I come from honestly one of the roughest places in the South East, from what was literally known as the wrong side of the tracks, to being the first in my family to go to university, have a multi-hyphenated career with the growing realisation that the sometimes revered adults in positions of power were not necessarily smarter, or better than I was. So if I want someone like me to be in those rooms, given that doors were not as easily opened for me as for others with more privilege, I might need to crack the mould, self-start, deal head on with my imposter syndrome, and be the one to do it. It wasn’t a case of someone letting the ladder down for me, there was no ladder to climb to begin with. This is core to my work. Fashion Roundtable was the first UK organisation to work on DEI reporting for the fashion industry. A piece of work at times deeply upsetting to engage with, as we heard testimonies which highlighted the issues so many people have faced, led by Dr Royce Mahawatte and Davina Appiagyei. It took over 2 years and there was no easily available funding, as we were the first to do it. We also led on getting politicians to re-engage with our sector. Prior to launching fashion was not mentioned in the House of Commons once in 7 years, 2023-2024 there were 18 parliamentary questions, and over 500 people attending our All-Party Parliamentary events.
Imposter syndrome when you grew up on a council estate and now are giving speeches in parliament, international governments, meeting royalty, or consulting to c-suites is perhaps totally understandable, but it does not have to define you. How I see it is, I have this secret weapon. I can understand how it feels to be left behind by politicians, targeted by racists, impacted by everyday sexism and misquoted, judged and have to work twice as hard. I see it as a gateway to opportunity, not a limit on my potential. But what I have realised is that to do this, we need 3 key things:
We need to be able to walk around those beliefs, looking at facts not just being in the at times overwhelming feelings.
We need allies who can support us: from mentors, to trusted team mates, to friends - and in those we need people who lift us up, not put us down.
Celebrate our wins and build healthy habits and relationships.
South Oxhey was a beacon of hope for the Welfare State, it functioned like a mini fiefdom, with its own estate office, police station, library, dentists, doctors, schools, places of worship, wide roads and independent, alongside nationally recognised, retailers. Its decline, the demolition of the precinct to make way for private housing, and the sense of nostalgic dissatisfaction emanating from the Facebook pages dedicated to its memory, is something I have spoken of before. It seems harder now for a Tamara Cincik in 2025 to realise her potential than I did, and continue to work hard to do. This to me is not progress. And the politics of anger has filled the void. So with the results of the recent local elections in, and the news filled with Reform and polls on whether or not Nigel Farage will be our next PM, I feel strongly that if that is not what you want, you need to build your own metrics of success, you need to look at counter narratives, as if Farage, the former Dulwich College student turned commodities trader politician, is the voice of the people something is lurching wildly wrong in our national narrative. We know this, we have witnessed the playbook. Brexit did not make us richer, drunken parties in Number 10 were not a good idea during lockdown, Union Jack flags and MAGA hats made in China are not signs of national pride, and Trump is not the Pope,
Clickbait is making fools of us all, with get rich/thin/smart quick solutions, which not only belie years of studying.training or hard work, they also undermine the need for experts, experience of indeed talent. In all of this there is something more potent, allies like Gary Stevenson breaking down economics and the metics of inequality, George Clarke who is driven by the scandal of the UK’s housing crisis and escalating homelessness to use his fame to push solutions to those in power. For us at Fashion Roundtable it is placing heritage, craft and creativity in the spotlight. These can and should be used to build national pride and a sense of belonging, our past and our potential. So as we celebrate V. E. Day enter London Craft Week, I urge you to dial down the noise from your social media, and pick up a skill, perhaps even one from the Heritage Crafts annually published Endangered Red List, many of the workshops being offered are free, and while not everyone of our readers lives in London, perhaps this is the time to lobby your council to make London Craft Week something for the whole of the UK, or even a global event. Imagine that, a week where instead of feeling isolated you feel engaged, energised and in the zone of what we call at Fashion Roundtable, the Creative Wellbeing Economy. It seems we are not alone in seeing wellbeing and creativity as opportunities to influence mindsets. Anglia Ruskin University last year published research “that found creativity had as great an influence on participants’ wellbeing and happiness as sociodemographic factors like age and health. Helping people to access affordable opportunities for creativity could be a major boost to public mental health.” So as random as it seems, the solution to clickbait populism might start with in-person crafting events. If we are not being taught those skills in schools, despite the recent UK government curriculum review, we have to take matters and skills I would argue into our own hands.
Keen to learn more about Imposter Syndrome read here.
Fashion Roundtable’s Impact read here
Creative Wellbeing Economy read here
The 93% Club here
When I was interviewed by Dazed about the lack of working class talent in fashion
When I interviewed Carolyn Harris MP for the Front Row to Front Bench podcast about being working class women