Many years ago, Jordan misheard me say ‘I’m a hairdresser.’ Jordan thought I said ‘I’m a haireditor.’ Thirty years in, I think Jordan was right.
Hair found me in 1996, before I’d found hair. Hadn’t considered it, hadn’t planned for it, just fell in, stayed in, and it turned out to be one of the better accidents of a life that has accumulated quite a few.
The training came first. Toni & Guy, then John Frieda in Mayfair mastering the blow-dry, then the Vidal Sassoon Academy where the geometry of a haircut became a language. Not art. Design. There’s a difference. Art serves the maker. Design serves the person it’s made for.
Every appointment begins with two questions: What do you love about your hair? What do you hate about your hair? Generally the answers take twenty minutes to come out properly. Well not every appointment, but if it’s a bit slow getting started this is what I’ll ‘prompt’ for and it’s what everything generally boils down to in my head. That consultation isn’t a formality, it’s the beginning; it’s the most important part of the work. You convey the territory. I draw the map.
Unless you’d rather not know what’s coming at all — in which case, ask about the Mystery Cut!
Early on, I accumulated what looked from the outside like a string of lucky breaks. Being taken to Paris by Eugene Souleiman, one of the most respected hairstylists in the world, before I’d properly worked out what I was doing. Discovered in a Bohemian Parisian arthouse. Then Japan, teaching at Aichi Beauty College in Nagoya by the age of 23. From the inside it didn’t feel like luck. It felt like showing up to things with £50, a week’s hostel booked, and faith that the universe knew what it was doing with me. Create brave circumstances and the luck follows.
Fashion weeks — London, Paris, Milan — have been part of the picture since the late nineties. Session work, catwalk, editorial, advertising, private clients across three decades. And now Windle London, Covent Garden. The only salon I’ve ever wanted to work in. The session world is pulling again. Less like a comeback, more like a new dawn. I just need to make sure it’s nourishing not depleting.
The tools: energy-conscious throughout. Water temperature matters. The dryer goes off when it isn’t pointing at hair. Tongs are unplugged the moment they’re done. The same attention runs to the products — nettles, wild sweet william, Saponaria officinalis. A whole-plant approach where it applies, built from years of curiosity about what actually works rather than what gets sold.
That curiosity runs deeper than the products. Plocacosmos, The whole art of hairdressing, and other centuries old texts on hairdressing — used to mean a trip to the British Library. Now they’re findable online. I read them. The history of hairdressing is longer and stranger than most people realise, and understanding it changes how you think about the thing itself.
Somewhere in between, I dipped back into formal education. Architecture and Curating, not to go deeper it turned out, but to swerve around other things that were calling me. These interests have always run alongside the scissors. Art, history, philosophy, technology, architecture, poetry. They’re not decorations. They’re the person who arrives, and if you’re interested Cyborg, my alter ego can tell you more about me.
Not a colourist.