As we enter the third week of July it has been a quiet week here at IgStyle HQ as I prepare to sit exams. I did, however, find time to catch a little bit of TV on my BT Vision box, namely Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend. Aside from the overwhelming shallowness of the show itself what struck me were the, so called, ‘make-overs’. Take for example, 19 year old Jade from Liverpool who arrived on the show with a beautiful head of thick, never dyed, chestnut coloured hair. Enter the stylists, out comes the dye and the scissors and she leaves with a generic brown with highlights colour and her hair significantly thinned. Hardly a make-over, in fact I would go as far as to say that it was a tragedy. These are supposed to be top stylists, but they either failed or refused to recognise the beauty of natural, healthy hair.  

Another example is 19 year old Meddy from Cardiff, gorgeously curvy she entered the show rocking a distinctly Marilyn Monroe look with shoulder length platinum blonde hair. After a run in with the stylists she was left with a mullet-esque crop which clashed with her feminine look and did absolutely nothing for her round face.

So, on two counts the stylists got it resoundingly wrong and, indeed, there were other examples, but these were the most striking. There were, however three common themes; 1. Short is always best, no matter how healthy the hair is or how much it suits the person it can always be improved by whacking a chunk off it. 2. If in doubt dye it, this is true no matter how beautiful current/ natural colour or how much it suits the person’s complexion. 3. You always look better with an ‘edgy’ modern cut, i.e. choppy with sharp edges and differing lengths, preferably thinned as well.

Point 3, in fact, appears to be the modus operandi for hairdressers all over the country and, taken together, the three themes, reflect the apparent distain sweeping the hairdressing industry for anything that looks like it might naturally grow out of your head.  It has got so bad in my area that I have christened the look the ‘hairdresser haircut’, i.e. the short, razor cut crop, jet black underneath, platinum blonde on top.

That, of course, is an extreme, but on a lesser level hairdressers have long been known for the propensity to ignore their client’s wishes and style the hair whatever way suits them.  I should admit that always having had long hair, in defiance of current trends, it is a battle that I have fought for many years. Indeed the unpopularity of long hair in itself presents other problems, having my hair put up for formals as a teenager I had to curl it myself in advance as the salon ‘did not have time’ to do so themselves. In one salon, that I never returned to thereafter, I was as good as verbally bullied by the stylist for an hour after answering her question as to why I have long hair with the comment that most people have short hair nowadays and it is nice to be different. It turned out she had just cut her hair short and her boyfriend didn’t like it. These examples, of course, would not be complete without a mention of the apparent misunderstanding of “just a few inches” in many salons when you go in for a trim.

That said, I am not saying that every hairdresser is guilty in fact there are good stylists out there, if you hunt for them, but the majority it seems are incapable of thinking of anything outside of current trends and if Paris Hilton’s British Best Friend teaches you nothing else it clearly demonstrates that this applies to high street and ‘top’ stylists alike.