![Pinterest](https://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=https://uknews.evprotec.com/my-dad-the-claw-hair-clip-inventor/&media=https://uknews.evprotec.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/127330154_img-20221024-wa0009.jpg&description=Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Model Kaia Gerber wears her claw clip in classic tortoiseshellIt was the hair accessory of choice in the 1990s - fashionable yet functional - making a comeback in Covid lockdown when a trip to the salon wasn't possible.But few people realise the claw clip started life in a humble workshop in France, and it was invented by my foster dad."We had a saying: 'Wherever you go in the world, you'll find a bottle of Coke, a poster of Michael Jackson and our hair clip,'" he remembers.I was brought up in France between two families. My birth mother, Maria, is from Cape Verde off the West African coast. She fled the islands when she got pregnant with me, aged 24, eager to leave behind her life of hardship for a better future in Europe.That meant escaping in the middle of the night to catch a plane to Guinea-Bissau. From there it was a turbulent journey of several months to reach Portugal and then France, aided by friends and family along the way.I was born weeks later in December 1976 in Riom, a small town in eastern France. We slept on the streets in deepest winter until she discovered an abandoned shed. Her health has never been the same since.Image source, Anne-Marie Dias BorgesImage caption, Me with my birth mother Maria in 1977A young French couple, Christian Potut and his wife Sylviane, heard of our plight and offered to take me in for one night, and help my mother find us a home.Yet, somehow, I never left.My birth mum Maria always said the Potut family would be repaid for their generosity. It turned out she was right.Fast-forward to the 1980s - a time of big phones, big hair - and for Christian - big dreams too. He had left school at just 14 with no qualifications but a passion for making things. Aged 27 and broke, he set up a small workshop in a 17m-sq- (180-sq-foot) old bread oven at the back of his parents' garden.But the business slowly expanded and by 1986 Christian and Sylviane's company, CSP Diffusion, opened its first fact){kind=link}
It was the hair accessory of choice in the 1990s – fashionable yet functional – making a comeback in Covid lockdown when a trip to the salon wasn’t possible.
But few people realise the claw clip started life in a humble workshop in France, and it was invented by my foster dad.
“We had a saying: ‘Wherever you go in the world, you’ll find a bottle of Coke, a poster of Michael Jackson and our hair clip,'” he remembers.
I was brought up in France between two families. My birth mother, Maria, is from Cape Verde off the West African coast. She fled the islands when she got pregnant with me, aged 24, eager to leave behind her life of hardship for a better future in Europe.
That meant escaping in the middle of the night to catch a plane to Guinea-Bissau. From there it was a turbulent journey of several months to reach Portugal and then France, aided by friends and family along the way.