Mara

I remember the 1970's as a time of unlimited possibilities. I had finished my studies, quitted a legal career and started to work as a pop lyricist and record producer in Munich. The city was vibrating with life, the air was filled with music and opportunity waited at every corner. My hairdresser was a young woman who owned a shop named MCM. The acronym stood for Modern Coiffeur Munich and at the same time for her name Mara Cromer, Munich. Mara's good looking husband was a DJ in a well known dance palace in Munich's trendy Schwabing district and at the same time a mostly jobless actor. He dreamed of fame, and it hurt his self-esteem that some of his celebrity friends were treated with more respect than he. Some day Mara exhibited an array of luggage in her "salon". I was informed that her husband had designed those bags and suitcases for himself, but that he could have them made for her customers too, if anyone would be interested. One year later, MCM was a small company offering exquisite luggage, two years later it was a well known brand in Europe, three years later it was a worldwide fashion phenomenon. Mara was now the wife of a billion dollar entrepreneur. Believe it or not, she remained what she was: My favorite  hairdresser. In the Munich flagstore of MCM there was a little room where she cut my hair in the 1980's, until disaster hit the company. But that's a story of the early 1990's which were the extreme opposite of the miraculous Seventies.