Ashleigh Hodges

Ashleigh Hodges is the recently appointed creative director at West London salon ‘Jamie Stevens’ and a Matrix artistic team member. We asked her the current hot questions:

What is your vision of client services for colourists today?
“I feel colour services are still on the rise – there’s not many people walking around with virgin hair nowadays. Hair colour now is the best way to show off your best self. Whether it be a bit of colour contouring to enhance features or a full on mermaid melt to show off personality, there’s a colour and technique that can work for every client.
Where do you think we need to improve our service to colour clients for 2018?
“I feel there’s still a massive gap between the client and the hairdresser when it comes to expectations and the final result. The main thing we as colourists need to massively work on is our consultations. Everyone sees colour differently, we all know this, but it gets forgotten so often during consultations. We can see what the final result will be, but does your client see the same?
“It is our responsibility to create hair plans for clients and get them to understand what is achievable, but also for us and the client to have a clear understanding of each stage so there’s no shockers. Try to use visual tools and descriptive words throughout the whole process, because slightly darker to you might be black to them, cool to them might be a soft beige, we need to be clarifying all this in the consultation. We have had a huge boost with colour products constantly getting better and better, it’s given us the opportunity to not stress about the science and play more with techniques and creativity.
“But, I still feel along this wonderful journey colourists have stopped talking everything through properly with clients and that’s were our improvement needs to be. We are assuming these clients know what they are on about when they use our lingo, they don’t.
We need to take back the professionalism!”