ZEST FOR KNOWLEDGE

The Common People Experience – what exactly is this…?

It’s bringing together what I’ve learned across the past five years working within wellbeing and empowerment. The aim is to educate, motivate and inspire – those are my three buzzwords! It's bringing together the I Can, I Am and I Will tools for reflection, the journal and coaching programme along with my expertise as a hairdresser. It’s my personal journey of my experiences of life and the industry; to build more genuine, honest connections with clients, colleagues and people, to open our minds and be able to really connect.

Often you don't truly connect with your client, you don't really talk to them about personal things. But my whole career has been built out of that emotional connection with the people that I have in my chair. Along with sharing my experiences, I wanted to educate attendees in the collection itself, which comes from my portfolio of work over the last 12 months. It's very current.

Tell us more about that work…

The hair cutting came from my work with Paloma Faith and Birdy. The sculptural work was also from my time with Birdy and Bambi Thug, too. It’s pulling on popular cultural icons and developing hair cutting techniques that can be broken down and taught as trends.

What did the Experience include?

I opened with a masterclass that included my Passion and Purpose film, then went into my portfolio of work from the last 24 months. Then I broke down my journey, this lived experience – trauma, addiction, but also emotional connection and choice.

During lunch, I shot the collection that I'd cut in the morning. I invited whoever wanted to be part of the shoot to stay and observe. In the afternoon, we split into two workshops; one group chose between the two haircuts, the other group did the sculpting technique.

For the latter, we had a long table with products and hair, and the workshop was about them understanding application, drying times, techniques. Everybody's always in such a huge rush to get things done, that it all seems so instant. But it's with techniques like sculpt styling that we need to take our time, break it down and understand just what we're doing. I’m hoping to take the Experience out on tour next year.

Dovetails is a haircut ting technique working with quite heavy disconnections, inspired by my work with Paloma Faith. It’s a sectioning pattern of a haircut that gives a dovetail shape around the face. And the name ‘Paloma’ actually means ‘dove’! The colour was a golden global and spotlight technique, kinda off and unexpected. The tone was a very punky blonde. Spotlighting is a technique that I use all the time, put ting light shine into a hair colour of any base. It's about where light hits the hair and gives it dimension and depth.

This is about being androgynous, desexualized and looking like you've done it yourself. It's about creating disconnections, then sculpt styling it rather than being overly styled. More of an air dry or a light dry. There are strong disconnections within this haircut and when I introduced it, some of the class said, “Oh, I always wondered how to do that, but never knew how”. It's unexpected. The Shady colour technique adds depth and dimension to hair without over colouring it, concentrating more on the root area.