Salon Focus Magazine
Article date: 01/07/2010
Strict on Testing
One of my big bugbears is colour testing. It is essential and if the client does not have the skin test then they do not have the colour. I also think that when clients have a skin test they should have it to the level of colour that the client is actually going to be using.
Insurance companies will not cover you if it is not done correctly and what hairdresser wants a client blowing up like a balloon in front of them? If the client is determined to do it the same day then we simply do every single hair in a foil, if they are willing to pay for it and if they are determined. My love of colour stems back to my upbringing in Australia and I remember the vivid greens and blues in my childhood of playing in the back yard and the blue sky overhead. I love the fact that colour can change a haircut and give it texture and dimension.
Colour gives the hair a holiday. People make sacrifices to get their hair coloured – that is how important it is
to them. If the colour is right they feel good generally. That is why “break-up hair” is such a phenomenon. Changing hair colour is a gesture, a new start. Although I have always loved colour, it did not occur to me for a long time to specialise in it. I learnt to cut, and then to do colour, but I became known for colour. Many of my customers do not even realise I can cut. The more I got experience in colour, the more I loved it. When I first started as a hairdresser in Australia my first boss was a jumpin-and-swim sort so I had to train myself.
When I came to this country I invested in formal training. I took the master colourist and colour specialist courses with Goldwell, which does great training. Now I have technical knowledge and understanding to back up my practical skills and instinct. My colours have vastly improved since doing the training. Since
doing the course I am a lot more inspired. I see things as a challenge now and I am ambitious about what I
want to do. I loved Perth, where I am from, but there is a bit more versatility in London. People are prepared to be more experimental, they are more cosmopolitan and up for anything. You can take a ten minute journey across London and you are in a completely different fashion area. It takes a while for
fashion to hit Australia. You can drive for four hours and still be in the same place. In Australia, because of the weather, there are lots of blondes. I find that most European hairdressers do not do good blondes. For a bit of grey coverage you can put a true semi on the hair that requires no mixing. I would say that there is only five per cent of clients that have not got coloured hair and whom you therefore do not have to pre-treat. Otherwise you are going to get uneven colour results that are darker than in the colour consultation. Colour has improved so much in twenty years but even so a lot of colourists will have 10 colours that they always use and they will not broaden their range. It is good to be able to use 100 colours and interchange them, by customizing the colour for the client. Thankfully manufacturers are realizing less ammonia and fewer chemicals are a good thing. Looking back, I can remember when I was doing 30 perms a day, but
now colouring has taken over. The next big thing to hit hairdressing will be a shampoo that quickly changes
the structure of the hair, from curly to straight and back again. Upkeep afterwards is vital but I do
come across the situation fairly regularly where the client thinks I am telling them to use a particular shampoo because she thinks I get commission on it. I finished up with one lady who was determined to use her supermarket shampoo rather than the one I recommended. I sent her down the road to
another salon to buy it, just to prove that I genuinely wanted her colour to last and it was not about commission. Happily, she buys the shampoo from me now.