It’s an odd thing to achieve a lifelong dream and find, almost immediately, another one waiting on the horizon. You’d think the satisfaction of achievement would be more long-lasting. That you’d arrive, exhale, feel the horizon stop moving and the dream finally settle into place. But that’s not how it works, not for me at least.

When I was younger I used to drop off Eugene’s prints at Windle so he could put them into his book. I’d collect them in from the photo labs on my bike, cycle them to wherever Eugene needed them, the salon or the agency, hand them over to reception, and leave. I’d stand in the salon for those brief moments and feel the atmosphere, a buzz. I knew then, that if I ever was going to work in a salon Windle was the place.

It took me decades to get there. There was a career break in the middle, I took a decade to focus on what I’ve always known to be my true vocation: bringing up my children. Life took the shape it needed to take. The dream sat where dreams sit when you can’t act on them. Not gone. Just waiting.

Then, in the spring of 2024, I put together a list of salons I’d like to work in. Of course Windle was the first place to go on that list. I interviewed at a few, quite an eye opener, and miraculously, within a month I found myself stepping through the door at Windle.

I felt like Aladdin stepping into a cave full of treasure. It’s not a return to a previous chapter, it’s literally a dream come true. Finally stepping inside a building I’d go out of my way just to walk past, so I could fantasise about working there. Inside it’s obviously a bit different, bigger now, but the atmosphere I’d sensed in reception all those years ago — the focused calm — is still there.

So that’s another dream achieved. I expected this might finally settle something, but of course it didn’t.

Because almost as soon as I’d landed inside the salon where I’d wanted to be for so long, the session work horizon reappeared. I knew Eugene still prepped there sometimes — Paul mentioned this at my interview.

Then one day Paul and I were chatting in reception and in walks guess who: Eugene. And when he sees me, he says “Simon!”

Knees go to jelly. Starstruck, despite my best efforts to conceal it — because I know that irks Eugene’s humility. I think he’s never been comfortable with the intensity of admiration that follows him around, and so I tried to dim it on his behalf. But 30 years on he’s still at the top of his game — just like KRS — and I couldn’t conceal that. Even just offering him a cup of tea I felt like a sycophant.

The next thing I know, we’re walking through the salon to the garden at the back, catching up on lost time and in passing he casually says: We’ve got to get you back on the team.

I’d said to Paul that I was afraid this might happen. In fact I think the exact phrase I used was that “I was scared I’d be tempted to run away to the circus,” in what I thought was the highly unlikely scenario whereby Eugene would a) recognise me and b) invite me back to the world of shows and shoots and call sheets. The world I loved all those years ago.

So of course I declined the offer…

Oh how it pains me to see that written down!

But I mustn’t be too hard on myself. I declined because I wanted to focus my attention on my chair in the salon. But that wasn’t the only reason. I’m in a phase of life where work could easily become a way to avoid other things. Where the circus could be less about the work itself and more about not having to be present for everything else. I didn’t want to fall into that addictive mode. And I was still shedding the last vestiges of impostor syndrome at that point. I know how easy it is not to maintain a healthy work-life balance. Living in London I see it all around me. That’s part of why I held back, even though deep down I could feel every cell in me wanting to say yes.

And there was something else underneath all of that, which I’ll come to.

I was also, frankly, chasing the wrong thing. There’s a KRS-One clip I think about a lot:

[KRS-One video embed placeholder — the principle: chase the money and it runs away, do it for the culture and the money chases you.]

As far as I can see, this is exactly Eugene’s MO. And that’s exactly what I’d lose sight of if I jumped at the offer too early, before I had stabilised my foundations at the salon. Before I’d grounded myself.

So I wrote him a letter. Obviously I’m not gonna show you what was in it — partly because that’s between us, but even if Eugene said he wouldn’t mind, I think I’m kinda embarrassed about how gutsy I’ve been. The substance was clear, at least I hope it was. I told him what I’d want this to be if we were to do it. Not assistance. Not picking up crumbs from his table. Not chasing his work or trying to inherit it. Something quite different.

I’d been my usual vulnerable self about all of this with Paul. The worry about the circus. The salon as something precious I didn’t want to lose. The deeper anxieties I’m not going to go into here. Paul listened. He didn’t dismiss the worry, nor did he dramatise it. He just held it carefully, which is exactly what a good mentor does.

He came back to me on it. He said something that has been a real breakthrough in how I think about this salon/session question, which I now know isn’t really a dichotomy at all. If held properly, both can complement each other.

In essence he said: it’s kinda obvious to the team here you belong in that world. If you’re unsure whether or not you want it, then pursue it just to find out. But when you do, just make sure you don’t let it take your energy. Make sure it nourishes you.

That advice felt cryptic in the moment, like almost all the wonderful advice Paul gives me. But as I’ve mulled it over these past weeks, it’s become ever more undeniable.

What’s unfolded since is the clarity I couldn’t quite see when I declined. I don’t want to assist Eugene. I want to work alongside him as a peer, a collaborator. My motivation is the same as it was three decades ago: I just deeply want to help and to be around Eugene. To me it feels like a friendship, like we’re birds of a feather. I wish it was that simple, but when it’s Daedalus’s feathers I can’t help thinking of Icarus.

I’m not nineteen anymore though. Now I have things to bring that I didn’t have then. I have a life outside the fashion world — ways of thinking and being that came from squatland, from anarchist principles I still hold, from the years of immersion in Paris counterculture that wasn’t about the shows. There’s a scene in The Devil Wears Prada where Nigel’s dream of finally seeing Paris properly, not just attending the shows, is dashed at an award ceremony. I stepped into Nigel’s dream when I was so young, and doing so rewarded me handsomely. Now I know I have precious things I want to share with Eugene. Honesty, candour, a deeply unorthodox perspective on life.

I can feel I’m doing the emotional work right here and now. Scratching away at the foolishness of being starstruck so that these qualities of mine can actually fly, and land. The act of writing this is a core part of that work.

I’m pretty sure Eugene would enjoy a tour of that world. Not in Paris. The artsquat scene there has been decimated by recent changes in the law. But here in London, where counterculture still seems to be hanging on by a thread and where I’m more embedded anyway.

Just like in the good ol’ days of assisting for free, I’m not in this for the money. Money has never motivated me. The “payment” I’m seeking isn’t financial. It’s technical: learning how he works now. It’s social: meeting the people he thinks I should meet. And it’s reputational: he’s been at the top of my CV for thirty years, and a conversation or two between us, here on this blog or somewhere else, would be worth more than any fee.

That’s the version I could say yes to. That’s the version that would nourish me rather than drain me.

It’s strange. You spend your life pulling toward a horizon, and when you finally reach it, you find the horizon isn’t there. Or rather, it hasn’t gone away, it’s just different and there’s always something beyond it. The question isn’t whether to keep moving toward it. The question is the one Paul left me with.

Does it nourish me?

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

If things start off badly, there’s little hope of a good final result, and in my opinion the worst place to start is a vague brief. “Just a trim.” “Something different.” “Do whatever you think.” And then, three minutes in while I’m in the middle of forming my cutting pattern, the “but” arrives, and the whole process spirals into constant renegotiation.

“You’re the professional, I completely trust you” is the same family of red flag, just dressed up nicer.

I’ve found a way around it. Two questions, asked early, that get me to a brief that’s about 85% clear. I don’t need 100% clarity, that’d be unreasonable, in fact I reckon impossible to achieve. But anything under 85% just doesn’t cut the mustard. So I ask:

• What do you love about your hair?
• What do you hate about your hair?

That’s it. That’s what my consultations boil down to. Two deliberately poignant and polarising questions.

If I can get 85% clarity on those two answers, I have everything I need to start. I know what to protect and what to address. I know where the energy is and where the resistance is. I know what the client values and what they’ve been carrying around, sometimes for years, without anyone asking.

I can sometimes spend 20 minutes, rarely more, just in consultation mode, especially if it’s a first visit. Almost every new client says the same thing: “I’ve never had anyone spend so long looking at my hair.” I even had one person nickname me Follicule Poirot. Admittedly my moustache was particularly twirly that day.

I also tell new clients about the three-visit rule. If we haven’t got to something in the region of 95% satisfaction by the third visit, there’s no point flogging a dead horse… it’s time to find another hairdresser. That’s part of the consultation philosophy too: an honest framework for what success looks like, and what to do if we’re not getting there.

What surprises me is how often these questions catch people off guard. They’ve come in for a haircut. They were expecting to be asked about length, or whether they want long or short layers, or how they want the back treated. They weren’t expecting to be asked what they love and hate.

But the questions work because they bypass the technical vocabulary entirely. You don’t need to know the difference between a graduated bob and a blownout-low-taper-bixie, or what point cutting means, or whether you want texture or weight. You just need to know how you feel about the hair on your head. Everyone has an answer to that, even if they’ve never been asked.

I usually start with the hate question and end with the love question. The hate question takes longer. There’s often a pause. Sometimes a laugh. Sometimes a sigh that tells me they’ve been waiting for permission to say it out loud. “I hate this cowlick.” “I hate how flat it goes on day three.” “I hate that my fringe never sits right.” That’s often the core of the brief; the problem I’m being hired to solve.

The love question is the easier one, so I nudge it to the end. People light up. “I love how it curls at the back.” “I love that it’s thick.” “I love the colour when the sun hits it.” That’s gold. That’s the part I’m going to protect, frame, build around. And it’s nice to end the conversation on a positive note.

When the talking is done, the consultation moves into a quieter mode. I might even say, “Okeydokey… talking time is over” or something like that. I shift into analysis mode. I look at the growth pattern, the hairline, which ways the follicles are pointing, the density, the shape of the curl pattern, where along the hair shaft the condition substantially drops off, all sorts of things. I don’t actively try to remember any of it. I just let it sink in like I’m reading a complicated philosophy book. I trust the intel is going in somewhere.

There’s a later stage, too, where I open the questions wider. Not as a fallback, but as a natural deepening. What do you love and hate about coming to the salon? What do you love and hate about your home maintenance routine? Those wider questions almost always unlock something even deeper. Because hair isn’t just about the cut. It’s about the whole experience of having hair. Washing it, styling it, living with it, catching a glimpse of your own reflection. These questions get at the parts that the first two basic questions sometimes miss.

By the end of all this, I’ll have a brief that’s about 85% clear. The remaining 15% stays open. I don’t try to close it during the consultation. Instead, I’ll ask towards the end of the cut, or when I can see the line of the bob coming around their neck: “Does that look about right?” That’s where the 15% gets resolved. That’s collaboration. That’s normal.

It also protects against the “do whatever you think” trap. Because once someone has told me what they love and what they hate, they’ve given me a real brief. I’m not guessing, I’m working from what they’ve told me.

My perspective is that design is a process, whereas art is more of a one-and-done thing. So I encourage my clients to take photos in the first few days after the cut as reference material for the next visit. It’s iterative. It’s a relationship that develops over time, not a single transaction.

What I notice is that this approach changes the dynamic of the chair. The client isn’t being asked to specify something they don’t have the vocabulary for. They’re being asked about their relationship with their own hair. That’s a conversation they can have. And once they’ve had it, they trust me more, because they feel heard before I’ve made a single cut.

This is what thirty years of consultations have taught me. The technical skills came with time and repetition. The questions came from realising that most hairdressing problems aren’t technical problems; they’re communication problems. And the right two questions, asked early enough, solve most of them long before the scissors come out.

There’s a Plato line I came across a good few years ago: the beginning is the most important part of the work. I’ve been following that principle for years, not only in my life as a hairdresser. It just became obvious that cuts which went well started with conversations which went well. And those conversations almost always started with those two questions.

• What do you love about your hair?
• What do you hate?

Try answering them honestly the next time you’re in the chair. You might surprise yourself with what you say. And the hairdresser, if they’re paying attention, will know exactly what to do with it.

There’s a distinction that took me a long time to find the words for. It fully landed while I was Vardering at Windle.

Not art. Design.

Art serves the maker. Design serves the person it’s made for, it’s inherently more collaborative. If I’m making art with your hair as my medium the result is exclusively my expression.

Design doesn’t work that way. Design needs to function. It has parameters to satisfy when you leave the chair and walk back into your actual life. Your parameters.

When the word bangs started getting used interchangeably with fringe, I realised hairdressing vocabulary was collapsing. The internet doesn’t seem to be helping here, actually I suspect the opposite. I reckon you could dance your fingers across a keyboard, ask your hairdresser for that, and they’d say, “Oh, is that like a curly-side-curtain-bang?” hoping something might land.

Instead, I use plain English, and although it feels like one of the more unorthodox practices in the salon chair, I’m very much into it. There are people who I suspect are unnerved by this approach. I think they’re the people who just want no decisions to make for a while. They don’t seem to want to be involved, I guess they’re just there to switch off and relax. I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m judging them for this approach. I get it. And I can provide that service but it’s a lot more complex than it might seem, for me at least.

I find the best approach is simplifying the language, and leaning more into the physical demonstration. It means I’m not getting tangled up in vocabulary; I’m communicating with you deeply and accurately. A convenient byproduct is that someone whose first language isn’t English, or who has an idiosyncratic communication style, can follow exactly what’s about to happen without needing to navigate hairdresser-speak. And I think that in itself is evidence that it is a reliable method.

So it looks like this: I hold the hair out from your head at a particular angle. That angle is a decision, which I can propose to you before I commit to it. I can explain what the likely consequences are. Hair being the unique medium it is, I can’t guarantee anything first time. But there are basic principles like the difference between blunt cutting and point cutting. Take a fringe, for example, it can be simply defined, sectioned out precisely and held so you can see what will and what won’t be incorporated. Essentially describing the line as best I can before it exists.

You are not a bystander in this process. You are the person the design is for. That requires you to be able to see what’s being proposed.

This is what thirty years has taught me more than anything else. Not the techniques those come with time and repetition. The communication. The moment when the person in the chair understands what’s about to happen and says, “Yes, let’s try that.” The moment they begin to understand what that actually looks like, how it rests. How what we’ve done this time has our hasn’t worked so we can adjust -or not- next time. That’s the design process as I apply it to hair.