Trevor Sorbie Blow Masterclass

Last Tuesday I spent a very enjoyable evening at Trevor Sorbie, in Brighton’s Lanes. (Their website is here)

We were shown how to create three hair styles, straight with volume at the roots, managing curly hair, and Glam but natural. A stylist demonstrated each style on a model, taking it in turns to talk and demonstrate, which meant we weren’t sitting watching someone solely blow dry hair for half an hour! The Stylists were Morgan, Allison & Rosie, who all had enviable hair themselves (but then as they said, you’d never want to sit down in front of a hair dresser with naff hair, which is true!)

Things I learnt that were surprising:

• To get a lot of root lift and volume at the roots use a SMALLER barrelled hair brush
• To evenly spread mousse through your hair without completely coating it, spray mousse into your hand, then use a fine tooth comb to distribute it through the hair, including the roots. (I’ve tried this and it works, I’ve been using the volumising mousse since I was given it in my goody bag at the roots at the crown of my hair with great success!)
• Curl your hair AWAY from your face (towards the back of your head, so either side of the parting goes the opposite way)
• when backcombing be gentle, but aim right for the roots, and use a mason and pearson type hair brush in preference over a comb!

My favourite (because it’s easier and I get up at 6am most days so am hardly awake!) was the Volumising look. As my hair is quite thin it’s length weighs it down a bit, so it never looks anything but flat, plus my hair is naturally fairly straight. Rosie started off with applying mousse from the roots to about half way down the length, then using a hairdryer started at the roots first, whilst elevating the hair (With a round brush, or the ‘head upside down’ technique. She explained that you can either use velcro rollers or slightly backcomb at the crown (or a mixture of both if you have time) to get the volume to last longer. She also touched on using straighteners to add volume, by pulling the hair up and away from the head and smoothing to the ends.

After the demonstration we had a chance to ask questions of the stylists and Kate (who is the co-owner/Director) which ended up in a long chat about colours (what to paint the salon, getting your colours read, whether we were warm or cool etc) and various other topics! We also touched on the ‘chat’ that you get at the hairdressers (I generally hate the chat that happens, and do my best to avoid it, but she said all her stylists are trained to observe their client and only chat to them if they think it will be welcome! phew!)

I was given a goody bag in with three products to try, the Salon Exclusive Caring shampoo and conditioner, and the volumising mousse, which I’ve been using with the above tip (Applying on a comb) as mousse scares me and reminds me of endless dancing exams with various hair style changes in quick succession! Plus I hate feeling ‘crispy’. I’ve found that I need to use less of the shampoo & conditioner than I normally would, and have managed to go 3 days between washes since I started using it too, which I am attributing to the fact that they are Paraben/CLC free.

I was also invited back post baby for a cut and colour, which I am looking forward to with much anticipation, as I’ve not coloured my hair since just before wedding in November, and probably won’t bother getting it cut between now and then either!

I also got to meet a couple of other Brighton Bloggers, Suzie (Hello October) & Rosie (Everything’s Rosie) and Lisa from JBPR who organised the event along with Clare. We had a good natter and nibbled some amazingly petite and tasty cupcakes too!