UK Hairdressing Guide

Birmingham is one of England’s fastest growing cities and is touted as one of the worlds leading cities for conferences, exhibitions and events.
Birmingham also houses shopping mecca’s Selfridges and Harvey Nichols along with a whopping eight shopping malls, each one different to the rest. In fact, CACI rates Birmingham as the best shopping destination outside London’s west end.

To keep up do date with Birmingham’s growing shopping districts, its varied culture and expanding city, Birmingham realised that people wanted a slick new image to go with their slick new city. Banished the forehead stretching pony tail and the army style crew cut, Birmingham’s fashionistas demanded a high class of grooming and were not going to settle for second best.

Business types favour the Mailbox shopping mall where Tony and Guy and Nicky Clark salons reside. There are also plenty of salons outside the gigantic glossy malls that offer a typically high quality service, weather you prefer Tressame or Bumble and Bumble you are sure to find Birmingham a cut above the rest!

Birmingham even has a hair salon called Little Snippers that’s dedicated to kids. Genious! You can even get your hair cut for only £7.00 while your children are entertained with a playroom and kids TV.

Being born with naturally curly red hair I had the kind of gripes that normal curly haired redheads have. Ginger nut, carrot top, frizzy face …the list of playground taunts goes on. Ok I am not psychologically damaged and admittedly I knew ‘frizzy face’ was never going to pierce my sense of superiority over people who laughed at such rubbish jokes.

Inevitably as I grew older I, like every other teenager in the world was un-satisfied with the attributes I had inherited. I tried every straightening serum under the Saharan sun and fried my hair into oblivion with every straightener on the shelf of Boots. This was in the day when blonde pan straight hair was really in and ginger frazzled puff was not. Now everyone wants to look different. Pan straight hair looks terribly 90’s and anyone loyally sporting it seems to take on the look of a miserable whelk.

By the time I got to college and met my friend Miranda, attitudes seemed to have changed. Inheriting ginger colouring from her mum’s side of the family who were white and British, but afro texture from her Trinidadian father, many people would have called her unfortunate. Despite convention she used to get stopped constantly so people could enquire on how she got such amazing hair and if they could possibly have some tips on how to get her style.

Brighton is a perfect example of how people’s attitudes are changing. No longer do hip young things endeavour to emulate the cookie cutter style of Hollyoaks. Personalities and attitudes are being conveyed through hair like art through fashion, becoming indivisible.

Thanks to the brighter than Brighton school of fashion giving Brighton the edge when it comes to new trends, other establishments around the town have been forced to up the ante to attract discerning Brighton customers into their scissor clad hands. Do not think that because Brighton is famous for its original and ‘over the top’ atmosphere that you will not find hairdressers to suite every taste. You will find many ‘alternative’ salons in Brighton but also more traditional classics such as Saks, where if you are a little less adventurous you are sure to be safe under the instruments of the award winning stylists.

So, if you are heading out in Brighton and you’re in need of a little updating, you’re sure to find something that will leave you with a spring in your step and maybe a bounce in your fashionably frizzy red curls.

You can always tell a Northern girl by her hair my mum used to say, and it’s true. Women in Manchester make full use of the excellent array of hair salons and hairdressers available within the huge city centre and the glossy marble shopping malls. Perfect highlights are favoured instead of overall bleach blonde, and well trimmed ends are preferred to straw like, backcombed barnets.

Luxury hairdressers, Peter Marcus has opened two salons in Manchester and Nicky Oliver also has an award winning branch in the city. Kings Street in central Manchester has the best salons but wherever you are in the city you are sure to find something that will give you gorgeous swingy hair to match your new Northern sass.

After all, look how many people copied Oasis style haircuts after the Gallagher brothers and how many people are now copying the Agness pixie cut! Even the Mohican came from the North. The only hair that has come from the south is bed hair, and where is the imagination in that? The South may have the power capital London, but something tells me that unfortunately for the style stakes, the power has stayed well away from their heads.