The local hairdresser who cuts with purpose and shows up for her community.
When you enter Gail Martin’s salon for a hair appointment, you’re being looked after. And somewhere between the colour consultation and the scalp massage, you start to understand that this place - Hair Identity, in Hillcrest - was never really only about hair.
“It’s not about me,” Gail says, with the ease of someone who genuinely means it. “It’s about everyone else.”
The Story Behind the Salon
Gail Martin is a trade-certified hairdresser trained at Servilles, one of New Zealand’s most respected hairdressing schools. Her path to opening Hair Identity was shaped by faith, a deep sense of purpose, and a personal loss that redirected her life. The catalyst was shaving her head for a close friend going through illness. Her friend passed away a month later. Shortly after, Gail felt compelled to do something meaningful with hairdressing. Not just for clients in a chair, but for the wider community around her.
“I just went for it,” she says simply. That meant building her craft methodically: at cutting bars, a community salon and four and a half years at a high-end salon. Then, just after COVID, she took a leap of faith and opened her own place. The timing felt precarious. Then, a week after she’d committed to the venture, she heard that the branch she’d been working at was being liquidated. “I was upset about the timing for my boss,” she says. “But it was good for me. I already had something else to focus on.”
A Personal Experience
Walk into Hair Identity and what strikes you first is how considered it feels. This isn’t a conveyor-belt salon. Gail works alone, which means when you’re in her chair, you have her full attention. And she has yours, every visit, building a picture of your hair’s history that no rotating roster of stylists ever could.
Her specialities are precision cutting, colour correction, and balayage - and she talks about all three with the kind of enthusiasm that makes you want to book in immediately. Colour correction, in particular, lights her up.
“I love the big transformations. Working with people’s skin tones, their features, trying to find the colour that moves with all of that, rather than just staying the same.”
She’s particularly good with fine hair and curly hair, two categories that have historically been underserved by salons too busy or too inexperienced to get them right. And she’s honest about what good colour actually requires: not just skill in the chair, but the right products at home.
“You wouldn’t put dishwashing soap on your face,” she says, with a laugh. “So why put cheap shampoo on hair you’ve just invested money on?”
The Products She Stands Behind
Gail uses Keune: a family-owned Dutch brand founded in Amsterdam in 1922, B Corp certified, cruelty-free, vegan-friendly, and formulated without ammonia or PPD. It’s huge in Europe and quietly growing in New Zealand, and Gail is an unashamed convert.
“I go by what my clients tell me. And they come back and say their colour holds better, their curl is more beautiful.”
She runs her entire back bar on Keune, and offers home hair care products as well. What’s on your hair in the basin spa area is what’s on the shelf. No bait and switch.
The Salon That Gives Back
Hair Identity is a certified Sustainable Salon, recycling 95% of all waste generated on site, including hair, metals, plastics, paper, and chemicals. A small $3 green fee applies per visit. Gail doesn’t apologise for it.
“Every hair salon has hair, chemicals, metals, paper, plastic. If we can stop that going intolandfill and make a difference, that’s a win. It’s a no-brainer, really.”
The recycling programme also creates jobs and - through the Sustainable Salons partnership with Kiwi Harvest and Oz Harvest - helps provide meals. The colour brand she uses, Keune, directs a percentage of each colour tube purchased to the Keune Foundation. Gail likes knowing every part of the supply chain is pointing in the same direction.
Gail donates a percentage of her profit to what she likes to call "Haircuts 4 the Homeless" by supporting Orange Sky, the organisation that provides laundry services and human connection to people experiencing homelessness. Gail donates a percentage of her profit to them. It started from something deeply personal: shaving her head for her friend, feeling the pull to do more, and realising she could make an impact without being out on the streets herself.
“Anyone can find themselves in that position,” she says. “I can help without being on the ground. So I do.”
She also runs an annual Christmas toy drive for Starship Children’s Hospital, offers reduced rates for students, Gold Card pricing for seniors on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and mobile appointments for those who can’t make it in. If you’ve just had a baby and need to get out of the house, she’s been known to say: come sit on my couch. Have a cup of tea. The hair can wait.
Education Evenings
Hair Identity runs events that are less about selling and more about teaching. Tiaras & Updos is aimed at ball season: a low-cost evening where young women learn what suits their face shape, their dress, their vibe, and walk away with the skills (and the confidence) to recreate it at home or book Gail for the big night. Tickets are a steal at $25, and I tell her so. She replies: “I want it to be available to everyone, the cost barrier shouldn’t exist.”
The Hot Tools Night is a mid-winter event focused on styling education: how to actually use the tools you own, what different barrels and brushes do, and how to get results at home that don’t make you immediately wish you’d just left it to the professional. Attendees can also bring old or broken hot tools to be recycled through Sustainable Salons, and pick up quality replacements at a discount.
Why It Matters
There’s a certain kind of business that gets built when someone starts not from ambition but from purpose. Hair Identity has that quality. Gail didn’t open a salon to become a brand. She opened one because she felt called to it, and because as she’s here for the community, not just the hair.
The clients who’ve found her tend to stay. Some have introduced each other in the chair and now arrive early just for the chat. She knows their hair the way a good GP knows your health: the history, the quirks, the goals, the compromises.
“My clients are family,” she says. It’s the kind of line that could sound like marketing. Coming from Gail, it just sounds true.
Hair Identity is at 41 Sunnybrae Road, Hillcrest, Auckland, just off the Northcote motorway junction. Open Tuesday–Saturday. Book online at hairidentity.co.nz or call 09 443 5077.
words Pamela McIntosh
images Supplied and Pamela McIntosh
Every time you support a local business, you're helping create jobs, keeping money in our community, and making the North Shore a better place to live. Sounds good, right?
