Not only are you a phenomenal hairdresser to the stars (who by the way most of whom won’t let ANYONE else touch their hair!), but your holistic approach has taken you on a journey to make your own products. Please tell us about them.

Haha Yes! I’m incredibly fortunate to have some very long standing and fiercely loyal clients, who seem to enjoy my particular approach. A big part of the job as I see it, is essentially being a support act. I very much enjoy collaborating with people creatively and translating ideas into imagery. But besides the fun of that, working on such an intimate level with artists, you quickly learn to read the room and use all the tools in your arsenal to get the vibe right. Over the years, I’ve picked up some pretty useful tools and a keen intuition.

 I first came across the wonders of essential oils, aromatherapy and massage at that same Sydney salon where I trained all those years ago. Each treatment started with a “sensory test” and an Ayurvedic inspired scalp massage. I thought it was pretty cool when I learned to tell how someone was feeling by the aroma they were drawn to. Those plant extracts also had the power to energise/ calm/ relax/ distract from the annoyance that their hairdresser was running late.. cool right! I was equally fascinated by how stimulating certain points on the body could open up energy channels and promote feelings of well being. That led to me taking lots of different courses and I’ve never really lost that sense of awe and wonder in nature and ancient healing modalities. It was a natural progression to start thinking about the importance of ethically sourcing ingredients, obsessively scanning labels for endocrine disrupters and other nasties and looking for ways to minimise environmental impact. And that’s what ultimately led to me incorporating some of my home blends into my kit.

 I come from a very long line of kitchen beauty enthusiasts. I think it’s a Lebanese thing. I have early memories of the morning mint tea leaves being squeezed into rounds and used as cooling eye masks. Rose water on everything! It’s about as clean, green and low waste as it gets and the more I learn about what these ingredients actually do, the more I realise the genius of that inheritance.

 My formulations have come a long way since then, but definitely still retain the same ethos. I love to make beauty that’s multitasking, nutritious, unadulterated food grade, fresh. That’s what excites me. That and the fact that I can just keep refilling the same container. Over the last year I really had the time to focus on reducing my waste to bare minimum, and by that, I mean taking responsibility for as much as I could. I decided to really be committed to it.