Issue link: https://www.ahpindiestylist.com/i/1359889
N ot a m e m b e r ? J o i n at a s so c iate d h a i rp rofe s sio n a ls .c o m 29 ANY FUN STORIES YOU CAN SHARE ABOUT WORKING WITH CELEBRITIES? I worked with Alicia Silverstone on all her red carpets and got to travel with her for four and a half weeks [in the early '90s]. The money I got out of it was the deposit for my first hair salon. So that was pretty cool. So yeah, I got to travel on the jet with her for a movie called Love's Labour's Lost, and it was a great experience. We did all the red carpets and all the TV interviews during the day. I put [that money] straight to the shop. YOU'RE A RUNNER. WHAT OTHER WAYS DO YOU STAY HEALTHY/SANE AND UNWIND? What's weird about being a hairdresser is you talk all day, whether you talk with a client or on a shoot or whatever. So, sometimes when you go home, there's not a lot left in the tank. When I am energized, I like to spend quality time with the family and find out what's going on with them. Mentally, I feel that's where I can stay really focused, and it keeps me creative and energized. So the running and the walking the dogs—and trying to eat a little better, drink as much water as possible— that's all normal, but I think your mental health is really important because we give so much. We give every day, whether that's behind the chair, in a studio, or even out to dinner! I get people, "Oh you're a hairdresser! What would you do with my hair?" You want to throw the water on them, but you can't. You gotta smile, you know. So yeah, I try and do as much as I can. IS YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE ON INSTAGRAM IMPORTANT TO YOU? I think [social media] is very important. I don't necessarily search for followers, but my content is important to me. Even when I work with a brand like Sebastian, and we create the most amazing content, I still want to include a little bit of me. Instagram really shows you as an individual hairdresser—and it keeps you in your lane. So when you see an Instagram girl who does balayage with 2.5 million followers, her page is just balayage. And it's amazing! And so people know what she does. She knows you can look at her quality. I'm not that person. On a creative level, my Instagram is very much black and white with little bits of color. Edgier haircuts. Edgier hairstyles. Edgy as in creative. I'm always trying to push the boundaries as much as I can, and Instagram reflects me as a person. Like me talking to you now. It's the same. My pictures are talking too, so they're telling a story about me. That's very important to me. DO YOU USE ANY OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA? I use Facebook, but to be honest, it's not something I use a lot. My mom is in Spain, so she uses Facebook at 80 years of age. I have to see what she's doing, but it's not something we use a lot. The only thing I do find Facebook really great for is when I do live events from the salon or online cuts. Facebook is very good like that. It can be a little bit more interactive—where people can actually build conversations between one another. It's this whole community of people jiving when you're cutting hair. So that would be the only time I would use Facebook. But as a platform to use it personally, no. And I'm not on Twitter because that's a rabbit hole I just can't go down. And TikTok is for my mental sanity—to go in for an hour and watch somebody make a cake, brush a dog, wash a car. It's just time out. So, it's Instagram and TikTok. WHAT AWARDS HAVE YOU WON? I've won a lot of awards, and it's fantastic to be able to say that. When I started hairdressing, there was no Instagram and no Facebook, and the brands were only coming on when they were building competitions. The biggest competition you could win in the UK and Ireland was the L'Oréal color trophy, and I won that at 20 years of age. I remember bringing a model over from London and spending every penny I had. But you know what? It worked out. If you won something, it got you noticed. So I went in and I started to do competitions. And I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but it just seemed like it was easy. You know, I won British Hairdresser of the Year three times, I won until I got older, and then I got these funny awards, you know, like five-time winner of blah, blah, blah. They were mostly based in the UK and Ireland, but it made me the hairdresser I am today. Competitions are the first things that take you completely out of your comfort zone. You're so scared. You're trying to come up with something. You don't know what you're going to do. How are you going to win this against all these other people? That made me be able to think on my feet to this day. So when a company like Sebastian says, "Shay, how would you feel about coming up with a few ideas?" I'm ready for that. DO YOU ENJOY COMPETING? I loved it! There's a bit of a competitive streak in me, even though I'm sort of quiet. I loved trying to know who the judges were, so I could try and figure out what was going on. Depending on the magazine, whether it was Irish Hairdresser magazine or Creative HEAD magazine in the UK, I'd always try to know what styles or what category would be best for me to go into. But the categories I would go into were always