Cut and dried

Sophia Money-Coutts

• Last Updated: October 20. 2009 4:52PM UAE / October 20. 2009 12:52PM GMT

Tracie Hayes, centre, a colour stylist with my hairdressers.com, instructs a group of hairdressers at a Dubai workshop on Sunday. Jeff Topping / The National

The whirring of hairdryers wafts from the ninth-floor ballroom of the Shangri-La hotel in Dubai. Inside, the scene looks like a Chapman brothers installation. Hairy, plastic heads sit on spikes, with people frowning and fussing around them with scissors. Bottles and empty boxes of hair dye lie on their sides as if fallen in battle. Piles of hair foils dot trestle tables and the carpet is covered with a thick layer of protective plastic sheeting.

The macabre scene is a hair workshop, being overseen by a visiting troupe of UK hair stylists, in Dubai as part of a push to educate and train UAE hairdressers. Among them is Lee Stafford, most often referred to as a “celebrity hairdresser” for a Brit-pack following of names including Billie Piper, Zoe Ball and Rachel Stevens.

With him is Stacey Broughton, previously the creative director at Vidal Sassoon for 35 years; Tracy Hayes, one of the world’s top colourists who worked at Vidal Sassoon with Broughton for many years, and Bee Dixon, another colourist who is at the forefront of the hairdressing scene in London. Together, they make up the vanguard of myhairdressing.com, the first online hair training site, launched in 2007, on which the team posst videos for others in the trade to study. The site has several thousand subscribers in 55 countries.

And goodness knows there is a need for teachers such as Stafford in the UAE. Who among us hasn’t heard a story of hair disaster or unluckily suffered as a victim in any number of the country’s hair salons? Dodgy cut, alarming colour, overly-fluffed blow dries, burnt hair – there are endless sad tales to be heard and split ends to testify.

How fortunate, then, that Deborah Whitehead, the founder of the Dubai business Salon Educators, saw fit to bring the myhairdressing.com team to the UAE after meeting them at a hair show in London last year. The result of her hard work was last week’s four-day endeavour – two days of shows, at which the stylists worked on models in front of an audience, and two days of masterclasses.

“Let’s break for lunch,” shouts Stafford, standing between his charges in white jeans and shirt. After several hours of cutting, they dutifully look up from their plastic heads and set down their tools.

“It’s just another day in the office,” Stafford breezes a few moments later after flopping into a chair with an exhausted-sounding sigh. Happily, though, he has come to Dubai with his girlfriend, the British actress and model Jessica-Jane Clement, and will be staying on for a few days by the pool after teaching.

Stafford came to Dubai in April on a shorter, solo trip for Salon Educators, but says he is still figuring out what the nation’s salons really need. “All I know is that people in the street are complaining that you can’t find a decent hairdresser, and it’s not the same back in England. You don’t get people saying that there do you?”

I relate a complaint that a friend of mine in Dubai recently raised – the lack of communication between client and stylist is a problem that explains why you could carry a picture of Scarlett Johansson into a salon and emerge looking like Gene Simmons.

“A good hairdresser will get into the zone with you,” Stafford says. “Consultation is important and they should try to get what you’re saying. But the other thing is, if someone is not that good, they could have an hour-long conversation with you and it would still be rubbish. To be quite honest, it’s down to standards.”

At this point, Whitehead steps in, adding that of approximately 1,800 salons in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, she would rate fewer than 10 of them. “That’s terrible isn’t it?” she giggles, before adding that the problem is worse for men because they cannot go into ladies’ salons and there are even fewer decent places that specialise in male cuts.

“Sounds like there’s a good market in Abu Dhabi then,” says Stafford, his ears pricking up.

Would he open a salon here to add to his two UK salons and growing range of hair products? “If I found the right partner I would,” he says.

Whitehead has lived in Dubai for 10 years, looking after private clients after running a salon back in the UK. It was only recently that she became fed up with what she diplomatically terms “the lack of education” in some UAE salons. “Some people are just given a pair of scissors and they think they’re hairdressers,” she says.

It was this desperation that gave birth to her link-up with myhairdressers.com. There is, she says, not only a lack of education, but also of inspiration and motivation. “I’ve talked to salons here who say: ‘What’s the point in investing in my team? They’re always moving on.’”

Last week’s initiative was just part of her strategy to improve standards in the UAE. Together with the myhairdressing.com team, Whitehead is planning to open a new academy next year.

Mark Butcher, the CEO of myhairdressing.com, explains their basic plans: “It’s not about fashion, it’s about technique. We want to set up a legacy.” There will be a series of one, two and four-day courses on offer, and a longer, six-month training platform run by local talent that stylists such as Stafford and Broughton have trained. It will run for 20 weeks of the year, closing down for the summer. What’s more, the team want the Government to establish a recognised qualification, similar to the NVQ in Britain, that would introduce a required, basic level of hairdressing to the region.

These may be lofty aims, but the team feels they are strongly needed. Broughton is particularly vocal on this subject: “Nobody has great haircuts. It’s a fact.”

My hand leaps up to my highlighted hair protectively. Do we all look that dated?

“Styles are probably about 30 years behind here,” he barks. “Everybody’s got long hair, why does everybody need it the same?”

“Colours aren’t being properly used either,” adds Hayes. “You can’t be blonde one day, brown the next and then go back to being blonde again.” She mentions one girl who came to the show with hair that had turned green because of the colour she had constantly run through it. “And she was shocked at what we were telling her,” Hayes says.

Back in the ballroom, a colour masterclass has kicked off, with 18 students assembled around their bodiless mannequins. “It’s real Indian hair,” says Butcher. Hayes and Dixon stand debating colours over one mannequin in particular, while Inga Maltman looks on. She has been in Dubai for 11 years and owns the Rania Beauty Salon in Deira. Hairdresser-speak is a strange language:

“What colour do you want?” asks Hayes

“188,” Dixon says.

“Oh. they haven’t got that. You need 6888.”

I wander off to another table where two young South African girls, Zahira and Nabiha, chatter happily while labouring over their plastic heads. They work in the Hairworks branch at the Jumeirah Beach Residence and are delighted at my hairdressing ignorance.

“Is that bleach?” I ask, poking at the foils on her model’s head with a pen.

“Oh, you’re so sweet,” she squeals, before telling me that she’s running through a brown tint.

She bends down and speaks in a conspiratorial voice. “These models are good because they don’t move or talk.” Then she giggles again. “But I love to talk.”

Cue more laughter from the pair. They’re enchanting – just the kind of characters you want to gossip with in the chair, all the while remaining confident that your hair is not about to be shorn off or dyed blue. Here’s hoping that the brave efforts of Stafford and company can chivvy along talent like this.