This is how you build business from trends

In partnership with Wella Professionals

As UK colour trend expert for Wella Professionals, Zoë Irwin knows a little something about what’s hot and what’s next when it comes to hair. At House of Glaze, she shared how to make trends and services built around colour a key part of your business

Zoë Irwin has an enviable job with Wella Professionals. “I look at things that are coming up, the seasons trends and put more of a focus on them and really determine what those shades are,” she explained to a rapt room of residents of the House of Glaze. She was also on hand to explain how she uses colour and trends with her clients and what’s trending for ’22 – let’s look at the highlights…

Be precise

“My day-to-day role is to represent Wella within the press. Magazines like Elle or Harper’s Bazaar call and ask: ‘What are the trends?’, and it’s for me to break those down in a way that can instantly be put into copy for their readers to understand. What works for me is to communicate that, to create a vision in their minds. If you say to somebody ‘red’, what happens is everybody imagines red in a totally different way. With colour, the more you start to communicate things that are tangible – the certain colour of a leaf, plants or a bird – the more precise you’ll be.

With clients, these are the words they remember. It’s very funny how clients are with hair colour, they like to be a bit boujee about it. I’m not saying you have to take my names, which are always a bit ‘60s influenced and very girly, but make your own, personalise them and see what works for you.”

Colour is a dream you’re selling

“When I go to a beauty salon for a facial, I want to know the end result – how am I going to leave? Hair colour should be something you’re talking about more – the clothes you’ll wear with it, the make-up – the more you can educate yourself on all of that, the more it brings it to life for the client. I’m the creative director for the John Frieda salon group, and I just know that when you start to communicate colour in this way, you can get a lot more coverage in magazines because it’s something that their readers will really pick up on. When you’re trying to get yourself noticed, it’s a good way to communicate.”

Zoë’s trends for 2022

Trend #1: Spiced Cinnamon Red

People are wanting to go warmer, because we’re coming out of a time of generally a flatter base across everything. When you look at these reds from a decade ago, it was much more of an orange tone. Now that we’ve got something coming off a flatter base, it’s almost like the mixture of the two.

What’s working so well with these tones is that they’re super flattering. Even when you have a high pink content, it makes this trend very wearable. The colours that I’ve put behind it are bronzed maple, burnt amber, maple russet, cayenne ochre and glazed sienna.

I look at things within nature to really communicate this to clients. You’re talking about a theme and a tone as opposed to getting a colour chart. I’m launching a red concept at Frieda’s at the moment, and these will be on mood boards around the salon. The reason these trends are rising is because of our continuing love of the ‘70s, where the palette is very warm, it’s quite nostalgic in times of trouble. We look to something that makes us feel a lot warmer, a lot calmer, and that’s why the rise of the ’70s is so huge.

Shinefinity shades to try:
Burnt Sienna Glaze 08/34
Ochre Glaze 07/34
Ochre Rose Glaze 07/59

Trend #2: Cashmere Blonde

What’s very interesting is how the nude palette has changed. I’m interested in overall perception of colour and what that is. I look at lots of different brands and what they’re into. For example, with nudes I looked at Kim Kardashian’s underwear range Skims and the huge range of tones. This changing nude palette is going to massively affect hair colour and the inclusivity of different skin tones… as it should have been a million years ago!

With nude, people used to think it was a pinky colour, which is really wrong because nude to everybody’s skin tone is very different. Finally, this is being looked at.

When I talk about cashmere, it’s because cashmere is luxury. We’ve been wearing more cashmere than ever because of lounge wear in lockdowns – £300 trackpants! When you communicate hair colour, aligning it with that, that word ‘cashmere’ instantly makes the hair colour chic.

Within this trend I also have mushroom, and there’s been a huge rise in mushroom in the beauty world as an ingredient. What happens is it hits you on a subconscious level, you suddenly feel like you’re see it everywhere. Any kind of mushroom tones have been massive within hair colour – almond blush, glazed mica and muted coral. You really get the sheerness of it.

Shinefinity shades to try:
Vanilla Cendre Glaze 08/38
Vanilla Buff Glaze 09/73
Mushroom Glaze 06/07

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