North Dakota
Renowned for debonaire style, Josef’s School of Hair Design founder dies at 97
FARGO — Joseph Olivieri, whose renown as founding father of Josef’s College of Hair Design in Fargo was amplified by his private model and dapper mien, died on Thursday, Dec. 22 on the age of 97.
Recognized professionally as Mr. Josef, Olivieri opened his faculty of hair design in 1960 with three college students.
Inside a 12 months he had 100.
By 2010, the 12 months the varsity marked its fiftieth anniversary, it had 200 college students enrolled at three campuses.
Olivieri graduated from a magnificence faculty in Hollywood, Calif., within the mid-Fifties and earlier than that he was the one male pupil at Fargo’s New York Hairdressing Academy when he attended the academy within the mid-Forties.
“With 100 women. Man, did I’ve enjoyable. In my day, they did not take into consideration a person doing hair, however that is what I needed to do,”
Olivieri instructed The Discussion board in a 2010 interview.
Olivieri,
who has been known as North Dakota’s “Godfather of Hair,”
turned the enterprise over to his son, Mario, a long time in the past, although the elder Olivieri remained an essential and beloved determine to college students and he would typically go to school rooms on the downtown Fargo faculty.
Dave Wallis / The Discussion board
Hallmarks of his private model included a handlebar mustache and a uniform comprised of fits and ties, which he stated he wore every single day.
“I like to decorate professionally. After I exit to bars, individuals ask if I simply got here from a marriage,” Olivieri stated in
an interview with The Discussion board in 2015
.
On the time, Olivieri talked about his private philosophy on life and pressured the significance of practising self-love.
“Should you do not love your self, you may’t love anybody else,” he stated, including: “My dad used to say, ‘Look within the mirror, look in your coronary heart.’ Should you do not feel it, how will you reside it? You have to have feeling. It is best to preach self-love, it is contagious.”
Olivieri’s daughter-in-law, Elaine Olivieri, stated Saturday that Josef’s College of Hair Design has been known as “your grandmother’s magnificence faculty,” a title she stated her father-in-law and their whole household have worn as a badge of honor.
Picture courtesy the Olivieri household.
“We’re so proud to be your grandma’s faculty and your aunt’s, sister’s, and so forth. We’ve got college students which might be third technology Josef’s grads,” Elaine Olivieri stated, including that the varsity is now often known as Josef’s College of Hair, Pores and skin & Physique, with two areas, one in Fargo and one in Grand Forks.
She stated household and mates plan to honor Mr. Josef on the faculty’s Annual Pupil Competitors on Feb. 18, 2023.
Mario Olivieri remembered his father Saturday as a tough employee who taught him many essential classes in enterprise and in life.
“You must maintain a optimistic thoughts and do not lose give attention to what your job is,” Mario Olivieri stated, recalling his father’s recommendation.
Picture courtest the Olivieri household.
He stated one of many hardest classes he discovered from his father got here in February of 1994, after a van carrying college students from Josef’s College of Hair Design crashed on Interstate 94 close to Alexandria, Minn., killing seven of the scholars.
Olivieri stated he had taken over the household enterprise simply weeks earlier than the crash and when he bought as much as communicate at a memorial service for the victims of the crash, he froze.
His father went to his facet, embraced him, and whispered some phrases in his ear, phrases Olivieri stated bought him via the memorial service and the tragedy.
“Be sturdy. Be sturdy for the scholars, that is who we’re right here for,” Olivieri stated, reciting phrases his father instructed him almost 30 years in the past.