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.