The End and New Beginnings

Our year as F.A.M.E. Team 16 has come to an end and I am now starting an exciting new adventure - find out more below...

We ended our year with a beautiful dinner at the Dorchester Hotel and of course an after party!

The F.A.M.E. Team has been the best year of my life.  A year of opportunities and inspiration by our industry greats.  It has been a once in a life time opportunity to gain experience and knowledge which I know will help my future career. 

I feel so lucky and privileged to have become such good friends with Rosie, Jamie, Zoe and Antony, we've supported each other throughout the year and I know we will carry on supporting each other in our next adventures. 

Speaking of next adventures, I have some exciting news... I have resigned from Sassoon and will be taking on a new challenge of running my own salon in Manchester's Northern Quarter.  I am so excited to see where this can take me and I can't wait to share it with all of my friends and family.

F.A.M.E. Team Final Workshop and British Hairdressing Awards

Well we have had our final F.A.M.E. Team 16 day... I feel emotional but we don't officially give up our title until the 5th December. Definitely milking it until the last day!


Our final day was with Akin Konizi at the Hob Academy.  I was really excited to have a 'cutting' workshop day- it's always interesting to see how other companies work and educate their own cutting techniques.  Akin has won many hairdressing awards so it was a great experience to meet the man himself.

The big event of the month was a trip to the glamorous Grosvenor Hotel for the British Hairdressing Awards otherwise known as the 'Oscars of Hairdressing'. I have never been before and was absolutely blown away by the whole event. Myself and my friend (also my genius photographer) Sarah Brown were finalists for Newcomer of the Year category and although we didn't win the title we had a great evening and enjoyed every second.

Congratulations to all the winners! The collections were very inspiring and we can't wait to start shooting for our next year's entry.

I will be doing one final F.A.M.E. Team blog post after the 5th December to show our final pictures as a team so please keep supporting me in reading my blog.

Our Newcomer of the Year Collection.

Just a final thank you to everyone who has helped make this possible.
PHOTOGRAPHER Sarah Brown
MUA Sophie King and Yasmin Schwitzer
DESIGNER Melissa Obika
STYLIST Lara McGrath and Sara Peacock
and the fantastic models - Lara McGrath, Isabel Hibbert, Gracie Lockheart, Chloe Bell, Sydney Lawson and Sarah Bramley.
Thank you to Balmain Hair for the beautiful hair extensions.

F.A.M.E. Team June Update

F.A.M.E. Team Journey for June. 

It's our half way point of our FAME Team year already!! We've had an absolutely mind blowing time with mentor days, workshops, shows and shoots and still more to come! I couldn't wish for a better team to be spending my time with. It's a good job we all get on well as we are spending so much time together :)

F.A.M.E. Team day in Cardiff with Paul Dennison 

We jumped straight into June with a mentor day with Bruce Masefield from Sassoon.  This day was interesting for me to see how everyone took on-board the Sassoon techniques and for the tables to be turned and me to be a student.  Bruce gave us an overview of his incredible career and went on to provide an insight into the basic principles of Sassoon ABC classic techniques.  It was really great to be able to watch Bruce demo up close as when I'm backstage I usually never get the chance.

My beautiful model Sydney from our Sassoon Workshop

Our F.A.M.E. Team day with Ken Picton and Paul Dennison in Cardiff was so much fun! Ken and Paul began the day by showing us some genius techniques to get our creative brains thinking outside of the box. They set us various tasks including one to create a hair collection based on an everyday object. Ken really taught us how to look at things with a different eye and how to become inspired by ordinary things such as a fridge! Later we were taken for a surprise at City Maze in the centre of Cardiff. As a team we were set the task of cracking the code to get out of the Maze room – of course we succeeded with great team work all round.

My final BIG news for June is... I am a Finalist for an internationally recognised hair competition called IT GIRL and so is my F.A.M.E. Team girl Rosie Binns.  For the competition I had to submit my entry as a portfolio/scrap book of everything I have done in my career so far. I can safely say, blood, sweat and tears went in to that scrap book and I couldn't have finished it without my support network - my mum, dad and James. Massive thanks goes to these guys who helped me carry on. I find out the final results in September at a fancy dinner in London.

I am really looking forward to July. Keep updated for what's coming in our journey,..

F.A.M.E. Team May Update

MAY HIGHLIGHTS

We've had a magical May on our F.A.M.E. Team journey so far.  It still feels like a dream that I am getting these opportunities to work with Industry Greats.

To start the month off we had a creative day with Adam Bryant and Sharon Peak from Ethos Hairdressing. This session was actually in Manchester so no travelling to London AND it was sunny! Adam and Sharon gave us an insight into their different hairdressing backgrounds, careers, salon life and how they keep their working partnership strong.  The day was all about creative colouring techniques - something they are both very passionate about. One of my favourite techniques that they showed us was braiding the hair and blending the colour over and around the braid to create a beautiful root glow.

Our next F.A.M.E. Team day was with Adam Reed, owner of Percy and Reed.  I found him incredibly inspiring and he talked to us about every single aspect of hairdressing he does from TV work, to catwalk shows, editorial hair and owning his own salons. Adam showed us the fundamentals of prepping hair and classic 'old school' hairdressing techniques such as a chignon. He even let us go through his endless kit bag and experiment with all of his equipment.  We've gone away with some classic techniques to practice and a huge shopping list of kit!

Something that I am very proud of this month is I have graduated from my Wella Master Colour Programme. This is something totally separate from the F.A.M.E. Team but has been a massive achievement for me.  I studied for a year taking up all of my spare time (and money) learning everything from colour foundations, product knowledge, science of how we see colour and extreme colour correction.  I went from being bottom of the class to gaining 96% (the best marks)! Even though I'm a Creative Stylist at Sassoon I wanted to learn how to colour for my own knowledge and interest.

Thank you for taking the time to read my journey - Look out for next month's update.