Jason Hall, Hair Stylist & Session Stylist

0:02Welcome to the Business of Modelling, the podcast where we explore the fascinating world of the modelling industry. I'm Tessa Dewing, Managing Director of Sandra Reynolds, a commercial model agency celebrating its 50th year of business. Jason Hall is an award-winning hairstylist and salon owner whose career spans decades of creative work in Scotland and beyond. He opened his salon in Edinburgh in the mid-1990s and has since built a reputation for combining strong technical skill with creative fashion-led hair. Alongside salon work, Jason's career has extended into session styling, editorial and photographic work, international creative projects and industry education.

0:50His work has been recognised at the British Hairdressing Awards and his imagery has appeared in publications internationally. Today, we're talking about Jason's journey into hair, the balance between salon life and fashion work, working in high pressure creative environments and building a career that evolves over time.

1:15Welcome to the Business of Modelling podcast. It's fun to be here. Before we get into the work side, I want to start with you. So tell me where you grew up. So I grew up in a council estate in Edinburgh called Western Hills, which is one of the places on Trainspotting, if you've seen the film Trainspotting. It's quite gritty. Yeah, it was a really rough sort of estate and a lot of drugs and stuff on it, but really nice people. I lived there, had a great time there, and we stayed there practically all my life. Were you part of a big family? Yeah, yeah, so I've got two sisters and a brother, and just really nice.

2:00And my friends from there, who have all went down different paths, we're all still really good friends. The bulk of them are more down the sort of working trades and stuff like that. So you can imagine when I says I was going to be a hairdresser. Yeah. I definitely turned heads. So did that come from anyone in your family? was it? No it was totally by accident to be honest it was, there was a hairdresser that used to come to my house and he used to cut my mum and my sister's hair and this guy was really cool he was really really cool he was really good looking, dressed really cool, used to, the women used to sit and laugh at him, they loved him, they thought he was like a god, he got paid and then he'd be away to some other woman's house and I thought he was a stud I thought he was just this ultimate male gigolo and after a couple of times I come in I actually says to him I fancy doing this because I thought I'd get loads of girls I says to him where should I train so he told me a place and at the time in Edinburgh there was a place called Greg Firth which was really it was sort of the very very high end very affluent hairdressers but very safe.

3:18He says that was the best training. So I got my sister on the phone the next morning, borrowed my brother's suit and started the next day. So this is after, so you would have done O-levels at this point? I was still at school. Yeah, with GCSEs. Yeah, I was actually still at school and I never, I really liked going to school, but I never got on well at school. Yeah. I'm definitely not academic, done a lot of music, done a lot of art, but no, I'm a waste of time at school. but I did enjoy going so I went, got a job and then went to my woman that was my guidance leader and says to her could I do an extended work experience they gave me a form for my boss to sign so I signed it myself forged his signature because I don't think he would have given me a job and started in the salon like I was used to wearing trainers and jeans and this was really quite upper market So you had to smarten yourself up.

4:17Yeah, and it was very, the first six months was really difficult. I hated it. So was this a bit like an apprenticeship? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was it the YTS or something like that? Yeah, it would have been YTS. I can't even remember. So you get paid like 50 quid a week or something. Yeah, yeah. I think my first wage was 23 quid. Yeah. That was in 1985. And at the time, I had three bosses in the place. And there was a lot of us. And it was an older team. And we'd done, you know, like Lord such and such and Lady such and such. And it was very, very high-end service-wise. Even daft things like the wallpaper was a person that made one of the wallpapers from Harrods.

5:04And it had a gold leaf in it. And, yeah, everything was high-end. But you were presumably sweeping up and cleaning the bases. And I genuinely just didn't get on well at all the first six months. So what made you stick with that? It was the main boss. I was handing him perm rollers one day, and it was one of the few times he had spoke to me. And he says to me, you know, he was sort of doing the Youth of Today act. He said, oh, you know, the Youth of Today, this and that. And then he says, you know, I mean, what are you going to be doing in two years' time? and says I'm going to own this place and you're going to be looking for a job and it sort of, we hit off for that moment and I could have gone either way it was really funny sort of, I don't know he started looking after me a bit training wise and then I just ended up, I've never ever been naturally talented at cutting hair or doing anything with hair, I've not got natural not got a natural bone in my body but it's a will sit and do something continuously until I'm brilliant at it.

6:16And so I used to be in there, ended up, I was training four nights a week. I was in the shop till maybe 10 at night and he was really good. He would, he just split up from a marriage and never had anything to do with his time. So he was just at work all the time. Yeah. And I just, I put in so much training after about, I think about 18 months, I started doing clients. then I was lucky enough. So it took you 18 months of training before, and that was just, presumably, did you have heads in those days? No, no, I used to get all my mates in, my mums, and I used to go around the shops getting people.

6:54I didn't want to cut hair, I wanted to get good at something. Okay. There was definitely no passion for hair. I have to be honest about it. I've always been good with people, and people have always luckily been good with me, So it was, I liked that part of it. And, you know, I was one of the few boys in the salon, so all the customers knew me. So I definitely got treated that wee bit different from clients. And what was the hair industry in Scotland like at that point? Amazing. I mean, presumably this would have been, though, before the kind of British Hairdressing Awards and the L 'Oreal Colour Trophy and all those sorts of things.

7:29So the L 'Oreal Colour Trophy was the first thing I ever went to. That's actually 70 years old this year. Oh, my goodness. Yes, okay, I didn't know that. The longest running hair award in the world. So 70 years this year, yeah. So what happened, after about 18 months, we'd done a seminar with the late Charlie Miller, who was like the godfather of British hairdressing at the time. He was an Edinburgh hairdresser. He sadly died last year, but Charlie was just unbelievable. And we'd done a seminar with him. I assisted him at it and that just changed my world there and then it just that was it I got it the penny dropped for me the guy was unbelievable and just such a a sort of nice gentleman as well and he was a gentleman and then in Scotland at the time that opened my eyes to the likes of the Rusks Rita and Irvine Rusk who were really aggressive hairdressers they put Scotland on the map and there was loads of great hairdressers in Scotland.

8:38So I started sort of opening my eyes to that and that's when hairdressing was amazing. Then once I got that, that just whole different world.

8:52Everybody knew the person at the time that was my boss. Like he was, I don't know if he was renowned, but everyone knew him. So it meant that I had connections everywhere. And then I actually ended up, when I was 20, I think, ended up buying half the salon that I'd done my training in, and we ended up, you know, we wanted world domination. The sort of matured head and the younger person. So we ended up, we opened four salons, and we had about 70 hairdressers. So that's so young, though, to buy half, you know, to do that. I just knew what I wanted. Yeah. You know, I just knew that... So once you decided that hairdressing was going to be your career, you were then going to be the best at that.

9:44Aye, as good as I could ever be, I was doing it. Aye, 100%. I was there and I knew that I didn't want to work for someone. I knew that I wanted people to work the way I wanted them rather than people who worked the way they wanted to work, if that makes sense. I wanted everything to be relaxed and I wanted everyone to be like me, that I knew every client that came in. I knew everybody's clients. That was always sort of my ethos. I wanted to be able to go into a place and know everyone in the environment. And so the salon, it wasn't called your name at that point? No, no. And we stuck with the same name because it had a good reputation.

10:31We got up to 70 by the time I was about 24, I think. That's a massive commitment, isn't it? Yeah, it was great. It was really good. Was it rent a chair at that point? No, no, everyone was employed. Or were they all employed at that point? Wow. Aye, everybody was employed. I mean, that's a big salary bill going out every month. Yeah, yeah, it was scary. And I'm a real numbers man. I'm quite good with numbers. And were they all in Edinburgh? So we had two in Edinburgh. We had one in Stirling, one in Falkirk. And then the idea was we actually, we'd done a deal to buy one in Dundee and one in Perth.

11:06And then I just woke up one morning and thought, I'm not doing it again. I just woke up and thought, like, so the whole thing I was trying to build was everyone knowing everyone. And I had 70 in a team and I probably knew 25 of them. Yeah, so it got too big. It had gone with something growing that quickly. I assume there was issues? Oh, yeah, loads of issues. And I think my business partner, who had been my boss, he was a lot older. So he was looking for a sort of exit strategy, whereas I was looking for world domination. I wanted to have them all over Scotland and I was really focused on that.

11:50And I think that's a really bad balance. when one person's sort of trying to slow down and one person's trying to, you know, rotate the earth quicker, almost it was. Yeah. And it just became a bad balance.

12:09How did your sort of session, your fashion styling start? Once I started cutting hair, I used to go on higher lights and literally grab models off the street and I bought a camera. And I started just photographing hair myself. It just sort of grew from there. Presumably you at that point as well, you send images into the hairdressing magazines, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. So I used to send 10x8 prints in. I used to get them sent back to me, saying they were the wrong size or they were this. And my dream was, you know, one day I'll get in a magazine. What was your dream back then? Oh, definitely. Just to get one in a hair magazine.

12:51So not even a cover or anything? No, no, no. It was, yeah, one day, you know, I'll get a picture of the magazine. I'll have page 65. I mean, back in the corner, yeah. Oh, desperate, desperate for it. And I entered my first hair awards when I entered Newcomer of the Year when, I think that was 1988 or something. And I entered that for, I think you could enter it for three years for Newcomer. and entered it for three years and got laughed at for three years, quite rightly as well, of the word. You know, just taking photos when I never had a clue. So was it the photos or the styling or if you look back now?

13:33Everything. But it was great. It gave me a really good sort of base because I understood a camera, understood lighting, understood what was bad lighting, but I still didn't figure out what was good. At the time as well, because I was young, and I keep on going back to it, but I think at the time it was really relevant. I was male, and we had a lot of dealings with L 'Oreal at the time. And I've been with L 'Oreal ever since. I've been with them 41 years. I became this sort of wee superstar for L 'Oreal. So that gave me loads of opportunities as well. So, yeah, I was really lucky. I got loads of things at the right time.

14:18Even when I first started doing, we used to do women's own chat, but we used to do the makeovers for it. And it was with a guy, you might remember him, Martin Evening, makeup artist. So I used to work with Martin all the time. So Martin then got me styling some stuff for pictures. We became, at the time, really friendly. So it just opened doors for me. And we had spending power. Yeah. You know, because we were using a lot of stock, so I did get spending power, which at the time was a massive thing. Right, so you were, to start with, just doing that a day a week and the salons were just running themselves.

14:57Yeah, I'd be in each salon a day a week and we had a manager in each. And yeah, the salons, they were fine and it was, we had two that made really, really good money. We had two that never lost a penny and probably never made us much. But we owned the properties, so we were doing all right that way. And basically, I got up one morning and says I'm never going back. So I ended up, I kept three of them. My partner kept one of them. And then I managed to sell one of them to the staff straight away. Another one, luckily a coffee shop came in. So I managed to sell that at a coffee shop. And then the one in Edinburgh that I'd kept, I'm still in.

15:42so I've been in there for 32 years or something I think. Wow, okay so that was one of your original salons, brilliant. That was the second one we ever had. And what does salon work give you that fashion or editorial work doesn't and vice versa? So I always say I'm the luckiest man in the world because all my clients I've known for years so they come in, it's like meeting my friends, we have a lovely chat, I catch up with everything, and they care about me, I genuinely care about them, and then they paid me at the end of it. And then we arranged to meet six weeks later. I mean, how lucky is that?

16:22Tell us about your on-set experience, the jobs that you've done. Oh, I've done loads. So my big thing is I've done loads of advertising, loads of millions of hair sort of stuff. my big thing's fashion weeks about I think it's about 16, 17 years ago I started doing fashion weeks so I started off in London doing a couple of shows there How did that start? Because that's not an easy thing to get into It was L 'Oreal L 'Oreal asked me to go along and assist someone on a show on a Sunday morning, I always remember went along, assisted a team there the lead hairdresser was a hairdresser called Anthony Turner who's a lovely guy, really, really talented and I just had the worst experience ever I was just so bad, like really basic stuff I was just, I was out of my depth, I was really bad and Anthony's a lovely guy and he came across and said oh thanks so much for helping and we got chatting And I was like, no, I had a howler there.

17:35I was really bad. That was, I couldn't get anything right. And he went, oh, but you kept on trying. You kept on trying. And he says, what are you doing now? And I says, oh, I've got to jump on a flight back to Edinburgh. I just flew down last night to help you with this in a way. And he says, well, can you get an extra couple of days? And so I ended up, I'd done seven shows with him over the next couple of days. Oh, so you learnt quickly then? Yeah, yeah, it was just, Anthony's just a lovely guy, and he just says, right, come on, that's where you'll learn. At the end of one of the shows, we had done some men's hair, and I'd done the men's hair.

18:13Someone asked who had done the men's, I says I'd done it, and it was Cavalli. So we ended up flying it to Milan and doing a job for Cavalli, and then it just grew arms and legs. Then I ended up, I've done everywhere with Anthony for about six or seven years. So we've done New York, LA, Milan, Paris, London, we've done numerous Barcelona, loads of different cities. But the main work was fashion shows. And I've always, all the way down the line, I've always had a sort of, they've never known it, I've always liked to have a mentor, sort of in the background, and Anthony was that mentor, and he's got this, just a sort of beautiful, natural touch with him, and just something about him.

19:03But after six or seven years, I'd learnt that. I'd learnt everything I was going to learn from him. So then I moved on, and at the time, the most renowned team in the world was Guido. so I went and worked with Guido for three years and Guido works like a sort of architect everything's very planned and after three years I felt I needed to learn it and I knew I had madness, I needed madness and the best person in the world definitely for that is a guy Eugene Solomon so I spent the next seven years with Eugene learning madness and Eugene's just the most oh, he's just the most creative person you'll ever meet and I think So you learnt completely different things from all three Yeah, but I needed that to make the whole me if you know what I mean And how did you get in there?

20:03Because there must just be thousands of, you know, young stylists and things, desperate and desperate to work with these guys Like, once you know that you're you're good and reliable and you stay totally calm and you're unflustered, then to be honest, you'll get an any team. If you're at a certain level, getting to that level is the hard part. And so that level really came initially through L 'Oreal for you? Yeah, yeah, definitely. It's L 'Oreal giving me that first show. If I'd never done that, my eyes would never have been open to it, really. And what did you learn from those guys to do And what did you learn not to do or how not to be?

20:48Anthony, it was just pure touch Anthony's just And I have things like, I've been the confidence If you're on a photo shoot and a girl turns up And you're getting paid good money to do the hair And a girl comes up and her hair's perfect Just bloody leave it Don't touch it Don't touch it just for the sake of it Yeah, just leave it and Anthony gave me that confidence massively Guido gave me the confidence that no matter what someone wants I can break it down in my head and figure out a way around it and Eugene just taught me how to be as creative as possible forget hair it's their jobs just about making beauty it's not about making showing off how good we are hair wise it's about making an image and taking it and making it more beautiful and sometimes that means don't do anything and sometimes that means, you know, cover the model's head with shaving foam.

21:47If that's what the right thing is, that's what you do. Just go for it. He's got an amazing creative mind. Obviously, those environments are super fast-paced and high pressure. What's the reality of working in those settings? Because there must be lots of egos flying around. Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely, I've found that if you go and get the first model under your belt, do it well, do it calmly, then the respect comes very quick and people just let you go on with your job. And definitely be prepared. You know, if you're good at what you do, that's never a problem. If someone's trying to maybe pretend they're good at what they do, they get found out very, very quickly and just keep a really calm head.

22:41Like, you've just got to be so calm. No matter what, just keep a calm head. And remember as well, the people in the seats are people. You know, they're genuinely people. You know, they've got feelings, they've got... So it's just been nice to everybody. Anne, do you feel that hairstylists often take on a role beyond the hair itself? I think what happens a lot on the set, especially if you're doing something editorial or a collaboration everyone wants to show how good they are and I think that's a massive issue Rather than working as a team they kind of want to stand out Yeah, just make something beautiful You know it's like rather than everyone wants to look the busiest Yeah And whereas you know I'm quite happy to sit and do absolutely nothing If it looks fabulous If it warrants it Yeah, yeah and sometimes we get especially if there's stuff you're doing and there's probably no money involved everyone wants to get their money's worth by showing how good they are and I think there's been a lot of jobs ruined by everybody showing how talented they are rather than showing what a a nice eye they've got to making something that looks amazing so I tend to be the one that sits back a bit on set.

24:09When you're working as a team, you know, to get a great shot, everything needs to be great. You know, you've got to have the photographer, you've got to have the styling, you've got to have the hair, you've got to have the makeup. You know, if one of those things isn't right, your shot's not going to work, is it? I always say you could have David Bailey taking the picture if the hair's a mess Oh definitely, I think it's setting out a sort of strong, like what you're trying to achieve And once you figure out what you're trying to achieve I think it all comes together great Even if everyone's average at their job I think you can still do something Because you tend to find if everyone's not the best You can sometimes come up with something quite creative Making everyone look a bit better but it's definitely having a definitive goal it's like the amount of times it's you know models will go for test shoots and it's stuff that's never in their book because there wasn't any use for man or beast by then I think you've got to have a responsibility that if you're testing there's got to be something there for everybody absolutely I think that's where you get on to like relationships with model agencies and stuff, if you prove that you've always got everyone in mind.

25:34You can give them something commercial they're not going to come out of it with stuff that isn't going to be usable for the books. I think that's where a lot of things go wrong. And also cutting hair. Hairdressers can be a nightmare. You said a model with lovely hair and they come back with they always want to crop it short and reach it long. It's so easy. So yeah, we use loads and loads of wigs And you do a lot of wig work Yeah, yeah, loads and loads So tell me about that It's basically, if you want to do something really, really over the top hair wise Like, I can do the best haircut in the world But if it's on a beautiful face, it never looks great So I work it back the way I do a beautiful haircut on a dummy's head and then find a beautiful face and then I put the two together.

26:29So it's like if we're doing something, I can have eight great hair shots on one model because it's eight wigs. And you can do that. You haven't then got the model's time to worry about. Yeah, yeah, it's quick. Doing the hair, that makes sense. One nice wig wrap and then you just get your wigs. And wigs that I'm sure are great now. Oh yeah, brilliant, yeah. Take a long time to cut. so it's like if I'm doing a wig for a shoot I'll probably over the space of three or four days I'll probably spend about 18 hours on it because I always tend to colour them, you colour them slightly different so I normally end up colouring them two or three times and so I'll cut it, then I get a model and actually sit and cut on the model as well then I take it away, so I spend a lot of time on them and the good thing is you've got it for life so then if we're doing a show say we're doing a hair show or say we're doing a commercial shoot if someone wants like a really common one nowadays is people will get someone and they want a big afro well if the model comes along and she's got lovely dreads in or lovely you know scalp braids just put the wiggle for the talk so you You know, I've got wigs that I've used 10, 15 times, but you get two looks at the model then.

27:51So anyone that wants, again, the hair side doing, you know, the images, it's definitely, they've got to learn how to do wigs, I think. And they've got to become accomplished in doing wigs. How many wigs do you have? Oh, hundreds. Hundreds. And, like, there must be, oh, there's tens and tens of thousands of pounds in them. But even we've got wigs that have started, you know, some that have been£20 right up to ones that are like, probably almost expensive, it's about£4 ,000. Wow, what's that like? A big, long, really beautiful blonde one. But again, we've done it, we got it for a job. So the company paid for it and I kept it.

28:35So that was fine, yeah. But that's what they wanted. So how early in the process do you like to be involved? Do you like to come on? Because I guess every job's different. Yeah, totally different. It depends what we're doing. You normally find you only have a couple of days at very most. The longest we've ever had a show was for every season with Mason Margiela with John Galliano. Wow, yeah, those are incredible. So we had four days. You always had four days and 24-hour days. There was always 28 looks for that. And we used to come up with probably about 140 looks and then whittle it into 28. So that's absolute indulgence.

29:19That's so rare that it happens. And we used to get that four times a year when John was still with him, so that was incredible. But it is such an indulgence to get that. normally you get the bulk of shows you get five hours

29:38and you work obviously in scotland it must be lovely getting lovely shoots here yeah yeah it's great what kind of shoots do you do here which brands have you worked with up here so up here we get there's quite a lot of golfy stuff that you get we have a uniglow melbourne golf we've done which was an incredible experience. In fact, they were brilliant. A handbag company, Stratbury. There's plenty on the go. You tend to find that it's the quality that's on the go. So I only get involved with certain ones of them, just cost-wise and stuff as well. But Scotland, it's like another wee layer of the fashion apple, I think as it's like you've got beautiful locations up here haven't you and a lot of the a lot of the work up here is very much they have a makeup artist that does hair as well yes because it's just very natural soft and it doesn't really warrant someone like me spending my spending money on me and I totally get that it's so we tend to find out the bulk of stuff like I do a lot of work with Adidas Specials we just finished doing all the advertising for Stone Island I tend to find that the bigger stuff we do tends to not be in Scotland because Scotland's big thing is that we do sort of Lamso and stuff beautifully and it's a great setting for outdoor shoots and stuff where you want natural hair it's a different vibe to it How do you deal with the windswept?

31:23Oh, same again It's funny, we've done a shoot Up at, you know, Macallan Whiskey Yeah So we had the violinist Nicola Benedetti We were doing a video on a big shoot for her And the wind was horrendous And she's got this lovely, long, beautiful hair But the wind never tends to go in the right direction Of where the photographer wants to shoot Totally Nicola doesn't like her hair away from her face So there were lots of moving parts that day It works, it works We got there But it's It's good, because same again Because of the winds and because of the weber Sometimes you get really moody shots And there's a real atmosphere To the shots So again, sometimes Especially if you get Photographers from abroad They can be a wee bit But I think you've got to swing it for the positive That you get a real atmosphere in Scottish shoots Yeah It's lovely And are there particular places or trips that really stand out for you?

32:33A few Yeah, quite a few We've done Tommyland for Tommy Hilfiger in LA We've done literally nothing hair-wise as to be says But that was amazing and that was a proper, like, boys' holiday. We had Tommy buses and we had Tommy flights in it, a Tommy hotel, and that's, like, one of the good memory ones.

33:04How does it work with family life? Is your wife very understanding? Yeah, my wife's a teacher. She's lovely. She's really understanding, and one of my sons... So her job's the opposite, then? Yeah, yeah. she's definitely the rock I'm the really I head all over the place and one of my sons he's 25 he works with me and he works doing a lot of the other stuff with me as well how do you find that working with your son? I'm so lucky because it's actually it's really lovely whereas I don't know many folk that like that that work with family I used to really enjoy it and then he's worked with me since he was 14.

33:47So he came in as a Saturday boy. And he always wanted to follow in your footsteps. No, no, same again. He just, he wanted to buy a new computer and I'm like, well, you can get your bed. Then he just finished school and was like, by then he was already cutting all his friends hair and stuff and he just got right into it. And he's really talented. He's done really well. He's won some awards and been up for numerous. awards and been on some really amazing jobs and yeah he's done really well my younger son he's 21 he's a photographer so we work together a lot doing photographic seminars for l 'oreal and we do e-com and stuff but he does a lot of traveling with djs so he's all over europe doing all these big fancy uh do so that's one of the reasons i set up the photo studio so that he had a base as well so that anytime he's doing studio stuff he's always got a really good base so yeah yeah it's good it's really good you've received a lot of industry recognition over the years how does that sort of is that important to you not in the least no it's i'm very grateful for it i definitely very grateful but and i find it i find it a big bit embarrassing to be honest but no it's lovely to get and and some of them you have to enter so we wouldn't enter if we didn't want to receive it yeah um but it's something that we do a lot of i'm sure you do a lot of that for your team as well you know you you're not bothered yourself but actually it's great for team morale isn't it it's great for them to have things to work towards rather than just being nine to five in the salon every day.

35:36Yeah and it definitely puts bums on seats in the salon. The best one we won was a girl that she actually doesn't work with me anymore but there's a girl that was with me 20 odd years and she was always the bridesmaid if that makes sense. She helped me with everything but it was always me that was winning stuff and then she won something two years ago and that was definitely the award I'm proudest of 100 % proudest of that because she deserved it. It meant a lot to her and she'd worked really hard to get that. And I'd sort of taught her so it was really, yeah I was delighted for her.

36:20How have you seen the hair and fashion industries change since you started? Before it used to be the difference between a good salon and a bad salon was there's maybe 10 % salons were really good and 90 were really bad and that was across the board because anyone can be a hairdresser can't they you don't have to have you could just call yourself a hairdresser or go and do a few weeks course and you were a hairdresser um whereas now i'd say 90 of salons can cut hair as standard the mubbie can't cut hair to that top top level but they can do a really good haircut. And what's made the change in that, do you think?

37:07Whether it's education, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. I think, I mean, that's where that has been good. We could have a right go at social media, but actually it's the same with models. And I think we used to have models come in, you know, in the sort of 80s, 90s, even 2000s. They had no idea what the job of a model was. They had no idea what being a model was all about whereas now they come in and they've seen it because they've seen models that post and I guess it's that you can get um educational videos now can't you and um and they know how to get to the next step as well yeah you know like the the no um like you know when I first started I knew nothing about fashion shows or never knew it was such a thing no it's whereas now everybody knows when the Dior show was.

38:01Or I saw a thing, I don't know if it was true, that the Balenciaga show was one of the most viewed shows in the 2000s. They were saying the Balenciaga show just there. I mean, it's such a massive thing. So everyone has access to them. And I think education-wise with hairdressing, everyone has access to it. It's everybody. So even the sort of average level is a really good level now, which is great. It can only benefit everybody because the top level then needs to work that bit harder to show that they should be top level. So I think standards, products, customers-wise, customers' education-wise, everything's just went up massively.

38:54Is there more competition? yeah and I think customers understand so much more and customers you know before you used to be a customer would come in and you'd say you need that shampoo and away you'd go with a bottle of shampoo customers want to know so much more now I think quite rightly you know it's I think the amount that a customer knows now some of the things you get is they'll come in and say I'd like you know I'd like you to followed the peripheral guideline and give me some reverse graduation. Oh, blimey. And I've just saw that on TikTok. I'm like, I don't know what that means. And people must come in with pictures all the time that completely doesn't suit their hair type.

39:39And people come in with pictures AI and they come in with pictures of wigs. You know, it's like, and of course... But actually it's a good hairdresser that's going to explain to them why and say we're not going to do that. Whereas a bad hairdresser, I guess, might try and then it's a disaster, isn't it? You know, keep on trying that. It's never going to look like that again. Yeah, and it's definitely that's our niche in the market. My salon's all about having sort of customer-friendly hair that can look absolutely beautiful for that big night out. But it's all about being customer-friendly the rest of the time, whereas someone else's niche is totally different, you know.

40:22and I think you have to find your niche and clients have to find what niche suits them. It's like I've been with L 'Oreal all my days and people always ask me why and we're the perfect match it's because L 'Oreal never show anything that fancy or that extravagant. Everything's just beautiful.

40:49There's a real fine line between things being perfection and them being ugly. And I like to just get that so they look almost perfect, but there's an imperfection, because I think that makes it look real and beautiful. And that's quite difficult. But again, one of the reasons for having the studio is that we tend to, we've just done a thing for a South African designer, Phoebe Magoo. is Anna Wintour's favourite designer just now. He'd done a thing in the V &A in London and with that we knew there was going to be, I think there was four styles, so I'll break them down and I'll video them beforehand.

41:35All the assistants get the video, these will be the four looks within reason. You've got to then video it, recreate it, send it back to me step by step. Right, so all the prep's done so I know right that person was good at look one but maybe not look two so I can break it down in my head so we spend a lot of time video and when we're doing stuff like that yeah um we do another we always we do a lot of work with centralst martin and that's the same again that's it's like because you've got teams from all over and you've got so many different like sometimes you can have 160 models which means is normally 80 different designers so we have to break that down into videos and say right you know designer 21 this is what's happening and I like that I like that organization part um and we tend to get offered bigger stuff like that because we can do it really well but also with quite a small team because I'm good at that that's what I'm good Well, you're a safe pair of hands for them, aren't you?

42:45They know they're going to come to you and you're going to deliver and it's all going to be organised and the ball's not going to get dropped. It's one of the things that, you know, like, I know I'm good at that. If there's something needs broken down and structured in a way and then sort of then made, softened up at the end, I'm really good at it. That's my niche. You know, that's definitely my niche. What are some of the most ridiculous hairstyles you've been asked to do? So every one of them, I would say, gets put down to John Galliano. Because then, man, I, every single, like, I've had lots of crazy stuff.

43:24But John Galliano takes a biscuit with all of them, him and the lead hairdresser, Eugene Solomon. So one of the ones was we were doing a fitting. And John says, I just imagine them just coming out the shower. and so this little light bulb that I could see went on in Eugene's head and for three days we figured out how to get bubbled water and mix it up in a way that the bubble would last for 20 minutes and we covered all the models here in bubbles before they all walked out and we had to shape them. And you did it? And we did it, yeah. And by the time they came off stage it was dripping over these beautiful clothes but John Galliano...

44:11Yeah, it looked amazing. and it was like the thing of the season. But everything I think that's been different level. There's certain designers that you always know it'll be different. John Galliano, Tom Brown, again, always something a bit different. Yoji Yamamoto, again, we've done some from half sewing here and leaving the sewing needles out and models getting them at their eyes. Yoji's always a good one. One that I'd love to do but I've never done is Rick Owens. I think Rick always comes up with something incredible and the hairdresser that does it with him, Duffy, again, has got a really incredible brain to him.

44:59And I've never worked with Duffy and I probably never will now, but Duffy's got an amazing brain that him and Rick Owens really bounce off each other well. So, yeah, it's loads of... I done one for a company in Scotland that would make everyone's hair look like a zebra's bum. They're genuine. The company's now out of business, but they were really obscure couture, they were called. Really cool company. Do you love jobs like that? Aye, aye. That are completely out of the ordinary. So we knew it was going to be like a zebra, but then you were like, what makes it even more obscure? and you know a zebra's got a really if you think of a zebra's bum it's really definite to shake it like it sounds you'll see a picture now and you're like there's a certain shape to it and yeah so we made all their hair look like a zebra's bum and with the stripes and everything so we've done some loads of wacky really good fun stuff but even if it's not tasteful as long as the models look beautiful at the end I'm happy but There is a real fine line with that, I think.

46:09A really fine line that sometimes being a wee bit crazy can also go ugly. I don't know, I'm not very comfortable with that. You get that quite often on advertising. If you're doing maybe four or five models as well, because you'll tend to find that they have a storyboard for each person and they've not had the time to sit down and properly look at each person. and everything's fast-paced. And a lot of the time, you can talk them round with that. But if there's six models and maybe three of them, the look's not right for, that's a lot of talking. And tight time, teams that are flowing in. So it's just really important to get all of this in.

46:59And I think, do you find that people don't put that importance on the hairstyling? Sometimes. Like it's almost a bit of a, oh, someone's just going to pop along and do the hair. And actually, that should be just as important as the clothes. And you know that yourself. Sometimes you have the most beautiful model, but they've got the furthest back hairline in the world. Yeah. So you tie it really right back and it just looks terrible on them. Whereas if you had maybe done it in a side part and softer and sometimes they'll say, you're like, oh, six models are just straight back so everyone looks uniformed.

47:38But sometimes you just need that wee bit more time. So yeah, that's the bulk of the time. I'll get the time and I can get changed. Sometimes you have to do the proofs in the pudding. So the first couple of shots, and then you see it and you're like, now you understand where we're going with it. That can be frustrating. But it's just part of the job.

48:08Well, you're about probably one of the very few industries that's never going to get taken over by AI for a start. Just now. You know, everyone wants their hair done and that's something that you need to have, you know, human person to do. Everyone wants human contact as well. Yeah. And I think it's, we're one of the few things that'll always be there. and I think consumer wise hairdressing will go up massively I think the price of hairdressing is going to increase over the rest of my days and it will increase massively but I think what people get and the importance and the sort of enjoyment that's going to go up massively as well it's going to be I think over the next five, ten years, hairdressing's going to be quite a different thing, but I think it'll be amazing.

49:03And I think it's something that once people my age get over it and embrace it, I think we'll make it even better. Jason, if you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice at the very start, what would it be? Enjoy it. Enjoy it. It's amazing. You're so lucky. Really lucky. How has your definition of success changed? I think in my early 20s it was world domination and possession and now it's just happiness. I think anyone that's happy is really successful. So finally, if a young stylist in Scotland was listening to this, what would you want them to understand about building a career in this industry that's going to last?

49:47If you want, I think you've got to show loyalty for whatever that is. I think the longer you're with a brand or a product company, they get to know you, you get to know them. Sometimes that's for good, sometimes that's for a bad reason, but if you chop and change all the time, no one really ever knows you, and then it's harder to get hurt. There's that consistency. Yeah, I think that's a massive thing. I think you've got to stay passionate and stay positive and build up as many connections as you possibly can. And what about someone that maybe is working in a salon that really wants to get into session work and get working on shoots?

50:31Approach agencies. How do you get into that? And offered anyone that you... Start assisting and things. Yeah, anyone you see that you like their work on Instagram that does that sort of thing. Like the stuff that you want to do, get a mentor. So if you see someone on Instagram that you really like, just pester them. They will not mind. Just keep on pestering them and say, can I help for free? And just pester and pester and pester because you'll get there eventually. You definitely will get there. And work hard. Yeah, 100%. Stay passionate. Just keep enjoying it and be nice to people. And that's it.

51:09Just be nice. Just enjoy yourself and have a nice time. But as long as you're lovely to people, that's it. It'll always work it in the end. Jason Hall, thank you so much. Well, thank you. It's been really good fun.