Hamburg, 1954: Greta Bergström has spent almost her entire life with her grandmother in Stockholm. Now she stands in front of a run-down house in St. Pauli, where her father lives with his new family. He greets his daughter icily, and in buttoned-up Hamburg Greta searches in vain for a job as a beautician. Until she meets Marieke, who does her neighbours' hair in the prefab barracks on the outskirts of the city. Together they decide to tour the city in a mobile beauty shop – with great success.

After the dark years of the war, women want to look pretty again. Marieke does hair, Greta cosmetics, and Trixie, the third in the group, gives fashion advice. Suddenly Greta's life is so brightly eventful, she almost forgets the reason for her return to Hamburg: to find out what had happened to her mother, who had disappeared without a trace during the war.