10 February 2020

Hairdressing students go to new lengths

Hairdressing students go to new lengths

What defines a celebrity hairdresser? Which Hollywood stars can also work a pair of scissors? How do you make hair extensions look natural? Acclaimed hair stylist Jal Clarke gave our hairdressing students an insight in a recent workshop at our Eastbourne campus.

Level 3 Hairdressing students from were shown how to apply hair extensions and then had a go themselves, under the guidance of Jal Clarke, stylist at La Vida Hairdressing in Eastbourne.

Jal’s visit coincided with National Apprenticeship Week, highlighting a key industry where apprentices are paramount. Jal, who trained with Vidal Sassoon and has previously managed Toni & Guy’s Brighton salon, spoke to students about his career in the industry.

“At one time you could tell what haircut was from what salon, and now you can’t,” Jal told students. “It could be from anywhere. Most of the instructors from the Toni & Guy academy have a background from Vidal Sassoon. And then you have Trevor Sorbie, who trained at Sassoon and worked at Toni & Guy, put the two together, created the iconic ‘wedge’ in the 80s and the rest is history for him.”

Jal is no stranger to setting trends, creating his signature haircut, ‘the faith’, in 2005, which sees the top and sides completely shaved and the top left long. “At one point it seemed that nearly every man on earth had that haircut or a variation of it.”

Despite this, Jal shied away from the spotlight, being anti-commercial for a lot of his career, likening him to Johnny Depp, who avoided mainstream films in his early career, before taking on Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.

“I was very anti commercial hairdressing because I found that product companies were almost like the record labels of the music business. Unless you were working for one of them, no one was going to see what you can really do.”

Jal led a masterclass for the students, making it the first opportunity many of them had working with hair extensions, “With extensions like this, you really have to start texturising the natural hair to make the extensions blend in. On an average person I would use 100-150 1 gram strands, which takes around two hours to apply. Most people have extensions for thickness and then they get addicted to the length. People with finer hair or over processed hair tend to come back time after time.

“If extensions are put in well then the person won’t notice or feel them very much and other people won’t notice them at all.”

What is a celebrity hairdresser? This was a question Jal put to the group. “When you talk to someone who you feel is one they don’t know what you’re talking about,” he explains. “You have people labelled celebrity hairdressers because everyone knows who they are, then you have people who work on celebrities, where no-one knows who they are.

“I thought I knew, but I don’t anymore,” Jal continues. “There’s myself and friends who do celebrity hair. I don’t walk out on the street and everyone knows who I am. Unfortunately celebrity hairdressers nowadays are people who have their name on a bottle of shampoo in Boots, otherwise no-one would know what they have done in hairdressing to be a celebrity. In London I got fed up with being known for whose hair I do rather than what I do. For me there have only ever been two hairdressers - ever - that have been famous for haircuts, and that’s Trevor Sorbie and Vidal Sassoon.”

Jal, who has worked in salons, catwalk shows and TV, talked to students about the difference. “Hair for shows is easy. Hair for clients is hard. Being creative is easy. You’ve got the products in front of you and all the means at your disposal. Anything goes; the styles you see on the catwalk are ones no-one will walk down the road with. Having a client who comes back to you time after time is hard. I’m lucky to have a faithful clientele who have been coming to me for over 20 years.”

Jal’s influencers growing up was his dad’s family from Brooklyn. “I went to school in Harlem for a while. When you study hair and beauty in the US one of the subjects you have to take alongside it is drama, the reason being you have to have the experience of being in front of the camera as well as behind the scenes. There’s a lot of Hollywood stars who are hairdressers who people don’t realise, like Sylvester Stallone, Robert De Niro, Danny DeVito and Michelle Pheiffer! Sylvester Stallone was an obvious one I think - if you look at the first Rocky film, he had the Cuban heels, the tight jeans, the vest and the hat. I used to dress a bit like that. He looked like a hairdresser!”

Paula Rego, Hairdressing tutor at East Sussex College, adds, “It’s been great having Jal and his partner Vivienne share their expertise with students. Students have had a go applying extensions, a part of training so few get to do so early on in their careers. This experience and opportunity has been invaluable.”