It has been a long journey to get back home for Carly Hardin Gill.
The Belzoni native is not only back in the Delta after a seven-year stint living in Louisiana, but she is back fulfilling her calling, and that is cutting hair.
A single mother of two young children, Harper and Noah, Gill spent two years away from her profession before she moved back to the Delta.
She took a job at Indianola’s Wholesale Mattress & Furniture store, and when the store’s owner, Harvey Watson, approached her about doing hair in the store, it did not take her long to make up her mind.
“I went home and prayed about it, and I got excited about it and decided I would do it,” Gill said.
A small space on the west side of the store was remodeled, and Gill began cutting earlier in the winter. Now that it’s prom week, she is even more convinced of her decision to open at 1101 U.S. 82 E Suite A.
“I started doing what I love again,” Gill said. “Being a mom is awesome, but doing hair is what I was meant to do.”
Gill went to college at Mississippi Delta Community College after graduating from Humphreys Academy.
“All of my friends in college were like ‘you should be a hairdresser,’ because I would do everybody’s hair,” Gill said. “I’d do their makeup, and I wouldn’t think anything about it. I always did my own hair.”
She attended Delta State for a short time before moving to Ridgeland with her best friend. That’s when she began to attend the Mississippi Institute for Aesthetics, Nails and Cosmetology.
“That’s the first time in my whole entire life I enjoyed school,” Gill said.
Gill was a natural when it came to cutting hair and doing makeup, but she said she enjoyed making people happy the most.
“That’s when I really fell in love with it, when I realized I could make somebody feel good, even though the whole world tells them not to,” Gill said.
She would go on to cut hair for seven years in Louisiana, before returning home.
Gill said the space in the store where her shop is now located has come a long way in just a short time.
The floor was lined with old carpeting, she said, and there was older wood paneling on the walls.
Today, the completely remodeled space has newer, but rustic, look with tin walls and ceiling and a concrete floor. All of the equipment is brand new.
Gill said she was nervous about taking this leap of faith in the beginning, but all of her expectations are coming to pass.
“They’re being fulfilled,” she said. “My clientele is growing daily. I’m meeting a lot of people I wouldn’t’ have any other way, and I’m seeing a lot of people I haven’t seen in years.”
With prom upon the city, Gill said she has appointments all the way through 5 p.m. on prom night.
“I love hair, and I love makeup,” Gill said.
She is open 9:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and 9:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday.
