“Where Are All The Female Hairdressers That Are Household Names? I’m Not Saying It Should Be Me, But I Think There Should Be Somebody”

Alex Brownsell started Bleach London in her living room, colouring her friends’ hair (and their lives) amazing shades of pinks, green and blues. Now the hairstylist and entrepreneur is the owner of an at-home product line that’s sold around the world. But what puzzles her is why, in an industry dominated by females, she is one of just a handful of women to have found success in the boardroom, as well as on the salon floor.

by CATHERINE | CONVERSATIONS

Alex Brownsell

Once upon a time, hair colours were named after things in nature: mahogany, copper, ebony, platinum. All that changed in 2010, when Alex Brownsell moved out of her makeshift salon in her East London house share (appointments were charged at “£50 and a bottle of wine”) and started Bleach London at age 22, courtesy of two chairs in the back of Sharmadean Reid’s WAH Nails in Dalston. Brownsell, who trained in her mother’s salon in the Midlands before landing a coveted trial position at Daniel Hersheson, was known for her experimental work, and Bleach – the first salon dedicated to colour – quickly became a hotspot for celebrities and sub-culture kids, seeking out her Noughties-defining dip-dyes and full heads of grey, white and pastel pink. “It was quite wild, actually, a bit like a party,” Brownsell recalls of those early days. “You’re classically sold trying to look beautiful and pretty and sexy and elegant and young. And what I tried to create with Bleach was the opposite.”

Bleach’s meteoric rise led to stand-alone salons, a partnership with Topshop and a DIY hair colour product line co-created with Boots (Brownsell bought the high-street retailer out of its licence five years later). It wasn’t long before fashion houses took note. Already enjoying regular bookings as a session stylist, Brownsell began working with Gucci on its campaigns, overseeing all the hairstyling, colour and wigs to achieve the soft and raw looks dreamed up by creative director Alessandro Michele. She then spent four years working at Celine with Hedi Slimane, bringing his vision and characters to life. Distinguishing between a Gucci blonde (“cinematic and creamy”), a Celine blonde (“punk and not toned”), and a Vetements blonde (“hard silhouettes and solid shapes”) offers a glimpse at the nuance of Brownsell’s artistry, which she likes to describe as precisely imprecise. “What I prefer is that everything looks a bit home done,” she says, “and that’s the thing about Bleach. We’re doing it perfectly, but it doesn’t look like you just went to the salon.”

Bleach started in your living room. Did you ever think it would get as big as it did?

Not at all! I remember being in WAH Nails and talking to Sharmadean about how the salon in my house was a mess and I couldn’t handle it anymore – and neither could my flatmate. A couple of days later, she emailed me and was like, ‘Come and take a chair here in the back. So, me and my business partner from back then literally came in and set up. In the first two weeks, my assistant AlishaDobson, who still works at Bleach, and I were working back–to–back until it grew. I’ve always had moments feeling like I’m not good enough and that at any minute the whole thing will fall away. And with Bleach, building a business is hard, it’s been full of twists and turns, feeling like you are teetering between world domination and total collapse. So, I guess I’m still waiting for that moment when I feel like I have cracked it. But I don’t think it’ll come until it’s all over and I have time to digest it all!

When it launched in 2010, Bleach London’s impact was instant – and huge

Looking back, what has been your favourite period of the brand journey?

God, so many bits. The start was obviously amazing. You look back with your older mind and think, ‘How did I do that? I was so brave!’ Nowadays I’m more cautious, I review every decision. But in the beginning, it was just like, ‘Yes, let’s go to New York and do a pop up!’ But I’m also so proud ofseeing our apprentices go on to achieve amazing things – opening their own salons or working at incredible places, like Josh Wood. Those moments have been impressive and important. Andbittersweet too, because you’re losing people…

You started at Daniel Hershesons aged just 16. How influential was that time on what was to come?

It was critical. While I was there, I met a lot of session hairdressers – Rudy Lewis, Lyndell Mansfield, Syd Hayes, and I ended up assisting most of them. Coming from a small town, I thought you could either be a celebrity hairdresser or you could work in a salon. Obviously, it must have crossed my mind that people work on film and TV, but I didn’t think there was a fashion [counterpart]. I did my first fashion cover at 19 for Dazed. It was one of [Gareth Pugh’s muse] Katie Shillingford’s things. She took this wig that I’d spent two weeks dying an amazing blue and used it on [actress] Mia Wasikowska, who had a shaved head at the time.

 “Sometimes, when I meet someone and they ask me what I do, I just say ‘Hairdresser’ and then I stop and see what their reaction is. And often, people are really dismissive”

You’re obviously very skilled with the bleach bottle, but that rule breaking attitude to colour? Where did it come from?

Actually, I’m really strict about hairdressing. One of the things that surprises people when they meet me or come and assist me is that I’m almost militant about what they need to learn, which is kind of opposite to what they think Bleach is about. Ultimately, at Bleach you’re doing colour corrections all day, so you have to be able to do the basics really well or you won’t survive. But the rule-breaking probably came from being at Hershesons and being so young and realising that anything is possible in terms of who you can be and what you can do with your look, which really blew my mind. I wantedto look like Debbie Harry, but nobody would bleach my hair. Eventually, my mum did it, but it was very yellow and only Lyndell was able to fix it. I experimented a lot on friends, so a lot of my techniques were self-taught. And I was really influenced by people I was working with in fashion, as well, who were trying those looks that had a kind of DIY feel.

“I can be as creatively fulfilled doing product development as doing my session work”

Of all the looks associated with Bleach, it’s probably the dip-dye that everyone knows. How did that come about?

Katie Shillingford, who was Gareth Pugh’s muse at the time, said to me one season, ‘It’s his first show in Paris. I want to look like one of his dresses.’ He had this dip-dyed black-white gown as one of his main pieces and a lot of it was monochrome. And I was like, ‘Let’s try and do that with your hair.’ That’s the first time I did a dip-dye – in my kitchen literally holding her hair upside down and thinking, ‘Uh, how do we blend it?’

In 2012, the same year you open your first full Bleach London salon in Dalston, Boots approach you to launch a product range. Was that something you had considered at that point?

Absolutely. It’s actually my hobby even now, sketching out brands. I have so many of them from back in the day that are really fun, like a shampoo and conditioner based around breaking up with your boyfriend in your teenage years. So when Boots approached me, I didn’t even have to think about it. I was like, ‘Yes, of course, and it’s going to be X, Y and Z.’ At that point, Boots sold something called Lightening System 101 and it was actually a bleach with 40 vol developer. I was amazed that you would call it that, so in effect the customer was putting a bleach on their hair and they wouldn’t even know. Our colours are made by an amazing manufacturer and that affects our margins but it means that when consumers buy into Bleach, they’re buying something a professional would use and they’re being told about it in a way that’s open, honest and transparent.

The new campaign shots for Super Cool Colours

For many people, Bleach is a scary word. Has it ever caused problems in your business?

When we expanded into the US, people found the name Bleach London really difficult to get their head around because they’ve been told that bleach is bad. And every few years we’ll go through it with a retailer or an investor, who’ll say, ‘Well, what about the name?’ We actually launched a permanent range called No Bleach London, and that’s made people annoyed as well, so I feel like I can’t win!

What was your experience like, working with Boots?

We were really lucky to get to work with Annabelle Franks who was setting up an incubator for disruptive beauty talent, to bring it into the Boots ecosystem. Bleach was an overnight success for them. It showed them the appetite among young people around the country to experiment with their hair in an accessible way. Sometimes, because of working in fashion, I look back and think, ‘Boots… Should we have done something else?’ but the brand visibility you get from Boots you cannot create in any other way. It’s the best marketing you could ask for.

“A question I ask is, ‘Can you name one female hairdresser?’ And nobody has ever had an answer”

And yet five years later you bought them out of the licence. Was that about wanting more control or because you could see opportunities for expansion beyond Boots?

I had always set my sights on global distribution, and much as Boots would have loved to offer that, it was just a bit slow for us. Having ownership of the licence is a natural conclusion for lots of brands. I just wanted to see what else was out there. But I have to say, when I see people start brands, ownership is a big thing for them and it was for us too, but sometimes I think they get that a bit wrong. I’ve come to understand that you’re better off having a smaller percentage of something amazing than 100 per cent of an idea that exists only in your bedroom.

The No Bleach Permanents were a major landmark for the brand

It’s quite an unusual situation – particularly for a female – to be a salon owner and simultaneously the owner of an incredibly successful product brand.

Sometimes, when I meet someone and they ask me what I do, I just say ‘Hairdresser’ and then I stop and see what their reaction is. And often, people are really dismissive. Yet, if I were to say I was a make-up artist, it instantly has this level of intrigue and prestige around it.  I find it really interesting how hairdressing still has this stigma attached to it. And that’s always been a bit of a mission of mine,to say that hairdressing is a great career, and you can do whatever you want in it.

Hairdressers like Jen Atkin and Chris Appleton are the face of their brand, but you don’t seem to play that same role within Bleach. Why not?

I’m naturally quite shy, which probably has led to it being that way, but internally within the businessI’m very visible, I’m around. What people like Jen and Chris have done is amazing, especially going back to that point of showing people how hairdressing is a credible career. But I’m doing a lot of retail meetings now, because we’re doing European expansion, and a question I ask is, ‘Can you name one female hairdresser?’ And nobody has ever had an answer. We inside the industry know there are lots of great female session stylists, but I think if you asked the public to name a famous hairdresser, theywould all be men, which is interesting, given our industry is 88 per cent female. You don’t think about gender disparity in hairdressing, because it’s so predominantly female, but where are all the female hairdressers who are household names? I’m not saying it should be me, but I think there should be somebody.

Brownsell still creates iconic Bleach colour looks, working out of a VIP salon in her office

How do we go about making that change?

Maybe rewarding female session stylists to do more in industry? I know it’s the norm now to straddle session and salon, and it’s the same for the influencer slash hairdresser slash fashion person. You can be it all now but it’s very new. The make-up artist Isamaya Ffrench is really breaking boundaries, she has a huge presence on social media, but she’s still doing very high–end fashion. In the past, if you crossed that line, it was hard to stay in the fashion world.

Is your session work where you fulfil yourself creatively as a hairdresser?

Sometimes, yes, if I do an amazing beauty editorial where I’m allowed free rein. But I can also get that in the studio for Bleach as well, when we’re doing concepting or product development. If you’re a creative, you’ve just got to find the bits that feel good to you. I’ve worked on fashion campaigns that somebody might think was the pinnacle of my career, and I’ll have been bored out of my mind, while I can be in the office looking at a financial spreadsheet and think, ‘This is really fun’.

In 2021 Bleach London established a US presence by opening a salon in LA

Your £5,000 Super Cool Colour Creative Fund is looking to support young creatives just like your 16-year-old self. Is this your way of giving back?

When I was young, you could move to London, do a hairdressing apprenticeship, pay your rent and create on the side. It’s almost impossible to do that now. So, we’re asking our audience to tag people who they think would benefit from this prize fund, and then we will ask them to create a piece for us. We’re hoping to find an emerging artist who will really benefit from the money. Fingers crossed, a lot of hairdressers will apply!