Pe­ter Ray Blood

Clem Lue Yat, whose name is syn­ony­mous with hair through­out the world be­cause of his prowess with hair styling, cel­e­brat­ed his 71st birth­day on Sun­day. Lue Yat, born in Trinidad in 1945, is the fifth of eight chil­dren of Samuel and Sue Len Lue Yat, orig­i­nal­ly of Pao On, Guang Dong, Chi­na.

Lue Yat's ca­reer in hair styling took flight at the age of 13 when he demon­strat­ed his in­ter­est and cre­ative abil­i­ty prac­tic­ing on his sis­ters' hair. He built up a clien­tele but need­ed for­mal train­ing and af­ter com­plet­ing a hair­dress­ing course in Lon­don, Eng­land, he re­turned to Trinidad at the age of 18 to open his first hair­dress­ing sa­lon on Queen Street, Port-of-Spain.

In the 1960s, Lue Yat pro­vid­ed hair­dress­ing ser­vices to the who's who of T&T, lo­cal beau­ty queen con­tes­tants and vis­it­ing celebri­ties and al­so did plat­form work in oth­er Caribbean coun­tries demon­strat­ing hair prod­ucts. It was the late great gospel singer Ma­halia Jack­son who, so im­pressed by his work, ad­vised him that he should be "do­ing hair" in Amer­i­ca.

In 1970, Lue Yat em­i­grat­ed to Mon­tre­al, Cana­da, en­tered a High Fash­ion Hair Styling Com­pe­ti­tion and emerged first run­ner-up. Af­ter six months in Mon­tre­al, Clem re­lo­cat­ed to New York, USA, and opened up a sa­lon in Brook­lyn in the heart of a West In­di­an neigh­bour­hood on Wash­ing­ton Av­enue and then on­to his own build­ing at Flat­bush Av­enue.

A hair­dress­ing busi­ness grows by word of mouth, and in­deed his clien­tele grew. The largest black hair prepa­ra­tion com­pa­ny–John­son Prod­ucts of Chica­go, man­u­fac­tur­er of Ul­tra Sheen Hair Prod­ucts–hired Lue Yat to demon­strate his skills us­ing their prod­ucts at hair shows through­out the USA, broad­en­ing his hori­zons in the hair in­dus­try.

Lue Yat moved from high fash­ion in the six­ties, jher­ri curls in the sev­en­ties, cre­at­ed his own unique In­ter­lock­ing Hair Weav­ing Sys­tem in the eight­ies and then his Wrap Net Weave Sys­tem for se­vere hair loss in the nineties, earn­ing him the ti­tle Mas­ter Hair Weaver of the World.

In the new mil­len­ni­um, many hair­dressers have been trained by Lue Yat in his hair weav­ing and hair styling tech­niques and more re­cent­ly, he mas­tered hair ex­ten­sions us­ing mi­cro-cylin­ders with­out us­ing glue or chem­i­cals. As our pop­u­la­tion ages, Lue Yat has been pay­ing at­ten­tion to the needs of the ba­by boomers by of­fer­ing so­lu­tions to hair loss prob­lems from ag­ing or ill­ness.

To en­hance his skills as a hair­styl­ist and a tu­tor, Lue Yat has de­signed tools and equip­ment to make hair­styling eas­i­er. He has pro­duced an in­struc­tion­al DVD on his hairex­ten­sions tech­nique and will soon re­lease oth­er in­struc­tion­al DVDs for hair­styl­ists.

Lue Yat has ap­peared in the lead­ing black hair­dress­ing mag­a­zines in the USA and at ma­jor an­nu­al hair shows in the USA and Eng­land. Plat­form work ex­posed his skills to oth­er hair­styl­ists who are baf­fled that an "Ori­en­tal" (be­liev­ing that he is from Ko­rea or Japan) is so ver­sa­tile in han­dling all lengths and types of hair of both sex­es and in par­tic­u­lar "black hair." When the ques­tions arise, he would ex­plain that he is from T&T where the eth­nic make­up con­sists of just about every race and that he has been "play­ing" in all types of hair for a long time.

Lue Yat op­er­at­ed a Full Ser­vice Sa­lon in Brook­lyn with a staff of ten em­ploy­ees, sev­en Trinida­di­ans. He has trav­elled the world teach­ing his tech­niques and while liv­ing "the Amer­i­can Dream," he main­tained his Trinida­di­an roots and still made time to give back to his coun­try by shar­ing his ex­per­tise with lo­cal hair­styl­ists and gov­ern­ment-spon­sored beau­ty cul­ture class­es demon­strat­ing what he knows best to fu­ture hair­styl­ists. He stress­es the im­por­tance of work­ing smarter and faster us­ing tech­niques he has de­vel­oped over his many years of ex­pe­ri­ence.

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So why did Lue Yat leave a suc­cess­ful busi­ness in North Amer­i­ca to re­turn home? He ex­plained: "The cold weath­er was get­ting to me af­ter liv­ing in New York for 35 years. My life was hec­tic while I lived and work there.

"When I first mi­grat­ed to the US in 1971, af­ter liv­ing in Mon­tre­al for a few months, I bought a big sa­lon on Flat­bush Av­enue, and in those days, "Up do's" were still in fash­ion; women were com­ing from all over to get their hair styled up. My days were very long, as af­ter work­ing I would have to stay back late in the night to style hair pieces as the clients would just pick the styled hair pieces and place them in a wig box.

"Af­ter a few years I got a job work­ing for Ul­tra Sheen Prod­ucts from Chica­go as their main styl­ist at the hair shows from Flori­da to LA. I did a lot of trav­el­ling, do­ing hair shows on week­ends, for about four years."

Lue Yat's so­journ in the hair busi­ness has been not just ac­tive, but al­so colour­ful and ex­cit­ing. "When I first in­tro­duced my weav­ing sys­tem in 1985, women were amazed to see how this Chi­nese guy from Trinidad was weav­ing with­out any corn row­ing," he quipped. "This hair weav­ing tech­nique is still the on­ly sys­tem in the world with­out the corn row or any foun­da­tion.

"I have con­duct­ed class­es in most ma­jor hair shows in the USA, UK, Paris, and through­out the Caribbean is­lands. I re­mem­bered when I vis­it­ed South Africa, I walked in­to a sa­lon and the hair styl­ist recog­nised me. He said: 'Oh! You are the Chi­nese man I saw in the hair mag­a­zines.'

"This year when I went to the pre­mier Or­lan­do Hair & Beau­ty show, many hair­styl­ists recog­nised me and re­quest­ed to have their pic­tures tak­en with me."

By shar­ing his skills, Lue Yat en­sures that up­com­ing hair­styl­ists em­pow­er them­selves to step out of the box and op­er­ate as pro­fes­sion­als with the client in mind, ready and equipped to han­dle any de­mand for ser­vice in the hair­dress­ing and beau­ty cul­ture. He fell right back in­to place on his re­turn to Trinidad se­mi-re­tired, cater­ing to clients from the 1960s to the present-day by ap­point­ment on­ly, while con­duct­ing train­ing for pro­fes­sion­als lo­cal­ly and abroad.

Lue Yat en­joys cook­ing "Trin­ba­go" food and is proud to be a Trin­bag­on­ian who has trav­eled the world "styling" win­ners of Miss Uni­verse and Miss World pageants, Miss New York State and oth­er West In­di­an beau­ties, so­ca artistes, US stars and oth­er celebri­ties. He has achieved many heights in his ca­reer while mak­ing five gen­er­a­tions of clients more beau­ti­ful.

This renowned son of the soil is about to re­turn to In­dia, this time to ap­pear on TV to share his ex­pe­ri­ences in the hair in­dus­try. He said: "Soon I will be vis­it­ing some friends in In­dia, where I have been asked to do some demon­stra­tions at a hair­dress­ing school. They have told me that I am the fa­mous hair­styl­ist from Trinidad who did Miss Uni­verse hair in 1999 on stage. I will spend about 20 days there with a friend's fam­i­ly, and af­ter, vis­it friends in Lon­don for a few days."

Cel­e­brat­ing more than 50 years as a pro­fes­sion­al hair styl­ist is Lue Yat's great­est achieve­ment as he main­tains good health to car­ry out his goals.

Lue Yat, most of all, en­joys his pro­fes­sion–and en­joy­ing one's work makes any job much eas­i­er.