Black Hairdresser Gains the Ultimate in Style: Salon With Rodeo Drive Address

Growing up in Long Beach, Clifford Peterson never imagined that he would have a business a block away from Gucci and a few doors down from Bally of Switzerland.

But a month ago, the 39-year-old hairdresser became the first black to own a business on wealthy Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.

The Clifford Peterson salon is there along with Elizabeth Arden, Nina Ricci, Jerry Magnin and Vidal Sassoon.

It is a place on the map that Peterson feels he’s earned after spending eight years on the fringes in West Hollywood, where he styled the tresses of Beverly Hills’ finest--Diana Ross, Jayne Kennedy, Richard Lawson, Stevie Wonder and Playboy’s current Playmate of the Year, Kathy Shower.

“The overwhelming part of it,” said Peterson, “is not being the first black on Rodeo Drive, but to have the business skills to stay here.”

To ensure his investment, Peterson spent several years conducting a feasibility study, then another year waiting for an adequate space. “I never looked at it as unattainable.”

Originally, Peterson envisioned himself as a lawyer and obtained a political science degree from Long Beach State before his uncle, a barber in Hollywood, lured him into the business.

In the early 1970s, Peterson rose to prominence in the beauty industry by inventing “the shake”--a revolutionary method of straightening and relaxing the hair of blacks. He then became one of the first black hair stylists to work with fashion models and for television shows.

Now, his multiracial salon is said to be the first in Beverly Hills.

Peterson said he has not met with opposition from other Rodeo Drive tenants, because “this is 1986, not 1966. And I didn’t come into the area unknown. They knew my intention wasn’t to bring Crenshaw Boulevard to Rodeo Drive.”

While Peterson acknowledges that he’s “being watched,” he is not optimistic that more black-owned businesses will open on the glitz-and-glamour stretch in the near future.

“I’ve shown the world what blacks are capable of, but I was already a member of this community. Very few blacks have, or ever will have, that kind of ‘in.’ ”