You’re taught a work ethic, and that your effort reaps rewards. When I left school at 15, my first pay cheque at Vidal Sassoon as a full-time assistant was £40 a week for four days in-salon and a day in the training school. And my train from Surrey was £48 a week, so my parents helped me and I worked odd jobs. I did four days of greeting clients, sweeping the floor, cleaning the toilets, washing the bowls, taking the laundry out… but the reward was I got to watch these incredible hairdressers cut hair. And then one day a week, I got to learn a skill.

How did that kid working at Sassoon start his adventure into session?

I met Eugene Souleiman – he was in my friend’s clothes shop in Covent Garden buying some expensive Japanese denim – and he opened the door to a whole other world of hairdressing. “What do you mean you live in New York and you fly here?” – I had no idea what he did, but he was this incredibly alive character.

I was at the Seven Dials branch of Sassoon, and Beverly Streeter [from the agency Streeters] rang the front desk. They said it was my mum! “Duffy darling, it’s Beverly. Eugene told me to call, he’s got a show.” I phoned in sick! The show was Hussein Chalayan, and I specifically remember this crazy Frenchman with a Mohican or something, standing on a chair with a clipboard and a stopwatch around his neck. He gave this speech to all the models on how to walk, how to embrace the energy of the show. Everybody cheered and the show started…

So that was it – a session career awaited?

Well, I finished my apprenticeship and thought, ‘hang on, there’s got to be more to this’. I was cutting old ladies’ hair, making 600 quid a month. So, I left hairdressing and London. I thought that it just wasn’t for me. I got in a van and I drove around Europe for two years snowboarding. I came back and was working in my best mate’s mum’s cheese factory in Camberwell, and on the weekends I was driving a van for an antique store. It was the best time, skating every night with a couple of cans of beer with my mates. And then a friend rang, “I’m opening a barber shop, we’re looking for staff…”

An old friend of mine came into the barber shop and asked me to cut some guy’s hair for a picture for GQ. They wanted a Nike ‘swoosh’ in the side. I was like, ‘oh, interesting’. Then I did a couple of other little things with him, and I’d met a few people, kind of East London, cool, i-D, Dazed crowd. Then my girlfriend started working as a styling assistant, and I was like, ‘Let’s just give this a go’.

How seriously did you take it this time? Could you see a career unfolding?

I was maybe 20 or 21, and I ran into Eugene. He was living in New York still, his assistant had just left and he asked me to come to New York, to work with him. I thought it was cool, and asked him to book the tickets. He said: “No, you book the ticket, you move to New York. And once you’re here, you can work on the team.” So I said, “I’m not doing that!” But six months later, he asked me to join him again, this time in Italy. I asked: “Can I bring a mate because your team’s really scary?!” They were the best hairdressers in the world – Angelo Seminara, Rudi Lewis, Raphael Salley, Johnny Sarpong, Martin Cullen – they’re legends!

These were the people that I was able to learn from under Eugene’s team and so James Rowe and I took our skateboards, booked some EasyJet flights and flew to Milan! We didn’t sleep for two weeks. And if we did sleep, James and I were sharing a bed or sleeping on the floor of a friend, skating between shows because we couldn’t afford cabs. Incredible times, I learnt so much.

Fast forward to last September… how did it feel when your name was called out as the 2023 Most Wanted Hair Icon at Tate Modern?

I didn’t know what to say. I’d like to think I don’t have an ego. I for sure do, sadly. It felt like I’d achieved something. To have an industry say, ‘Congratulations, you’ve done pretty well’, was quite mega. Us session hairdressers wake up every day and you’re your own boss, you go to work and you try to forge your own path in what you do. Or you just turn up, which is what I’ve pretty much done for the last 20 years, turn up and see what the day brings you. But to understand that people are paying attention, that I’m doing something right, was amazing. And my son’s really proud. He took the trophy to school!

You made a point of saying a big thank you to your team…

Oh, it’s all about the team, particularly Lukas Tralmer, who’s now going out on his own; Dale Delaporte; Paddy McDougall and Laurence Walker. I can turn up to a show, be the best hairdresser in the business, but if I’ve got 75 or 85 models in Milan as I did for Bottega Veneta, and each one of them needs the nuance of that personality, I need my team. And if my team aren’t happy, if they don’t feel appreciated or acknowledged, if they don’t feel like they have a voice, then there’s no point in me trying to continue doing the job I’m doing.

The last season that I worked with Eugene, I think we did 29 shows in three cities, and you turned up and you did that show. Now, the expectation is huge. They have a lookbook being shot backstage. They have first looks, they have TikTok, they have Instagram, they have video. And shows are becoming more adventurous. You might have four hours, and the rehearsal ends up being two hours. So, then you’ve got to get four kids through each chair in two hours. 

How would you describe your aesthetic? And which environment speaks to you more – the live show, the set?

I’ve built my career through mishaps and mistakes in a way. The perfection of imperfection is an incredible thing. On my journey to find perfection, I found something else I loved, which was imperfection in classicism. You’re trying to achieve something incredibly beautiful and classic, but once you get there, you’ve seen it already. It’s not new, it’s not evolved. So, the evolution came in either making something perfect, and taking it apart afterwards, or the journey there.

You can make a perfect silhouette, then as you’re undoing it in front of the camera, you suddenly see something like a shape that is so abstract. So let’s explore that. Let’s take a couple of frames, let me put a bit of wind in it, pull it apart a bit more. Let’s capture those moments because a show is instantaneous. But at a show, you’re presenting the reality, in three dimensions. If they’re wearing wigs and the audience is sitting on the floor, they’re looking up under the hairline – you’ve got to take it all into consideration. But when you’re in a studio working two dimensionally, there’s so much fakery that you can build and create. That is where that personal joy comes from. You can do the same silhouette on three different people, and you get a completely different result.

Gary, we don’t get to see you very often nowadays but we hear a lot about you – especially from the new generation of stylists. It seems like everybody who’s ever won an It List award wants to work with you!

I’ve always been very interested in our industry. I feel a lot of session stylistsforget where they came from, but for me it’s so important. I always say to my team, ‘You are the future, and I’m currently living my future!’ I’ve had two or three careers already, so I’m very positive about supporting them, and very pro them understanding where they came from, and how important it is to remember that they came from salon backgrounds, where they were doing 10 clients a day and had all that incredible training. I’m always really keen to connect with the industry, it’s just that my time has become so limited because of my session career. So, to do interviews has always been a good way for me to say how I feel, and tell my story a little bit, you know? It’s not an ‘all about me’ thing. I’m very passionate about younger hairdressers doing well and feeling that they’re worthy of being who they are as a hairdresser. It’s about inspiring them, to say ‘you can go on and do many things’, whether as an educator, a platform artist, a session stylist or a salon owner. And so much of what I do now is stuff that I learnt when I was a salon owner.

How did you find your way into hairdressing?

I grew up in Brighton and I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I was very wild as a youngster. I was rebellious, always wanting to do my own thing. On the plus side, being involved with different gangs gave me an insight into youth culture and its tribalism, which, in turn, led me to music, fashion and style. Back then, in the ’70s and ’80s, hair was intrinsic to youth culture, and it was a way for me to be able to express myself. Changing the way I looked, changing my hair or connecting to punk, ska, goth or the rave scene was a way for me to be rebellious, to say something and to have a point of view, without having to put it into words.

Moving from Brighton to London, I didn’t really have any direction and I felt a bit lost. I actually started hairdressing to make my parents feel a bit more proud of me. I trained in a little salon only a few miles from where I live now, in southwest London. The day I walked into that salon, I felt like I had found my home. There was something about it that made me think, ‘I love this’. And I got a very good training with an excellent teacher, who really put herself out for me. We’d do extra training nights and enter competitions, which was a really great discipline, and I was so enthusiastic about it and so into doing hair that within three years I decided to get my own salon – I’d only just finished my apprenticeship!

My mum came to work with me and I learnt a lot from her – not necessarily about hair, but more about how to run a day-to-day salon business because she’d had her own salon for about 10 years. My dad was a very good businessman, too; both my parents really were guiding lights for me, I was so lucky.

So, that was in 1985, I was 21 years old. And of course, I thought I knew everything, then quickly realised I knew nothing and made a million mistakes. But my mum was a great mentor and I had a great business partner, Kay Bolton, and it ended up being very successful. We expanded into the shop next door, we employed 25 people… And then it just got to the point where my mum wanted to retire, my business partner had a baby – and it seemed the right time to call it a day.

So, I worked for a couple of local salons, and then I moved to Glasgow, where I worked for Alan Edwards for a couple of years. The salon was a big L’Oréal client, so I did Colour Trophy, lots of shoots and shows, and I was good at it. Eventually, Alan wanted me to be a partner in the business because I was a real grafter. But then I thought, ‘If I don’t go now, I’m never gonna go. I’m gonna get stuck.’ My friend June had gone to work for TONI&GUY in London, so I called her and asked her if she could get me an interview and the next day I got the train down.

I was in my interview with Anthony Mascolo, who knew me from the stuff I’d done with Alan, and at the time Guido was selling his credits to TONI&GUY. I said, “You’re great Anthony, but I really want to do session work,” and I think he was quite taken aback by that. But to his credit, he said, “Okay, but you will still need to do your vardering.” And that was the deal. I was vardering but I was assisting Guido at the same time.

I worked for Guido for a couple of years, until 1996. He loved how fast I worked, and he took me to jobs all across Europe, and the supermodels were on the go at the time, so it was amazing. But there came a point when I thought, I’m going to pack it all in and go travelling.

So, you nearly gave up hairdressing for backpacking?

Yes, but then Lee [Alexander] McQueen was doing his Dante show, the one with the spines, and I knew [McQueen stylist] Katy England really well, and she asked me to come and assist. And the looks were really intricate but I was working so fast and focused, and it turns out I was in [make-up artist] Val Garland’s eye-line. Val used to be a hairdresser, she had a really successful career in Australia, and she came up to me after the show, and said, “Who are you? I’ve not seen you before. You’re very good, you’re very quick, you should be talking to my agent.” And I was like, ‘Oh, right!’ So Val talked me out of going travelling, and after multiple meetings with her agent I thought, I’m going to give this a go. I’ll just do it my own way and steer clear of all the dramas. And things went fairly quickly after that. All of a sudden I was doing loads of magazines and spending all my money on my kit and hair pieces!

Why do you think you became so successful so quickly?

[Laughs] Well, there were fewer session stylists back then! But okay, I’m a real team player. And I’m a good communicator and I come well prepared. My poor assistants, though, I would have eight bags of kit! It’s since turned out I’ve got ADHD [Edwards got the diagnosis during lockdown], and I wish I’d known back then that’s what it was.

Your work is described as romantic, whimsical and inspired by nature. That’s quite incongruous, coming from a guy who’s so heavily pierced and tattooed…

I was a real loner as a kid. We lived in a massive housing development, but it was right near a river and across the river was a farm where I was allowed to play with the lambs and the calves and I would just take myself off into little fantasy lands, listening to Kate Bush and the Cocteau Twins. It was pretty grim where I was, so in my head I would always be popping off someplace else. I love nature, I think Mother Nature is amazing.

One of your key collaborators is the photographer Tim Walker. He creates fantasy worlds that require you really to push the boundaries of your art. How did you meet and what’s it like to be part of his circle?

The first time I met Tim, as I’m constantly reminded by [set designer and long-term Walker collaborator] Shona Heath, it was when I was living in New York and I was doing the walk of shame wearing a smoky eye and a pair of leather chaps and I ended up crashing Tim’s birthday party! But as soon as we started working together, we just kind of clicked. We did so many shoots at Eglingham Hall up in Northumberland and those are my fondest memories of my whole career. Because it’s a kind of faded grandeur, falling-to-pieces country house and it was just so magical – that house and the people I met through that whole experience were just gorgeous.

The V&A did a show, Wonderful Things, that celebrated Tim and his work – and you were part of that…

That’s typical of Tim, wanting to make sure everyone gets recognised. To have my hair pieces and wigs as part of the exhibit was so amazing – the proudest moment of my whole career. What’s unique about Tim’s creative process is that it’s actually as enchanting as a lot of the pictures. It’s quite a family, he has a circle of people he works with, but we all know each other really well and everybody’s even. That’s what’s nice about having a good relationship with a photographer, because you really get into all the nooks and crannies of how they work. Like, Tim uses fisheye lenses a lot, so that’s when I know I’ll have to create something that’s double the size because when he puts that lens on it, it’s going to shrink.