Alex Brownsell built her salon brand, BLEACH London, from her apartment, alongside being a session stylist with a celebrity clientele. Here’s how…
“I come from a family history of female hairdressers.” That was the first thing Alex Brownsell told us on a Teams call, as she made her way to a wedding dress fitting in West London. Not, ‘I built a successful, influential brand in my early twenties’. Which is exactly what she did from her apartment in East London – you’ve heard of BLEACH London, right? – alongside being a hairdresser and session stylist, working on celebrities, fashion shows, and shoots. But going back to her early roots, Alex tells us: “My nan always wanted to be a hairdresser, but she never got to do it. She encouraged my mum to do it, and my mum ended up with a salon in the midlands.”
It was here that Alex grew up and her hair journey began. From 12, she started as a Saturday girl making tea and sweeping up. By 13, Alex was working on clients, and by 14, she had her own column. “I was already experimenting with bleach at 12 – and after I’d screwed up my friend’s hair (my mum had to fix), she was like, I’ll teach you because you’re being wild with this anyway,” she laughs. “But she wouldn’t teach me how to cut because she uses the wrong finger!” So, at 16, Alex took herself to London with an issue of HJ. “This issue was so inspiring – it showed all the best hairdressers in London, and I went to all the salons.”
From here, Alex got an apprenticeship at Daniel Hersheson’s and moved to London with plans on moving back to the midlands after a year. “I didn’t realise the breadth of the industry,” she says. “Hersheson’s was great – it had old school Sassoon people, session people, technical colourists. I finished my apprenticeship within a year, and I wasn’t ready to go home. I wanted to see what else I could do.”
Alex began assisting on fashion shoots and soon became Lindell Mansfield’s assistant. “The session world is complicated and amazing. You have to just be on set and figure it out. Nobody teaches you, it’s trial and error,” she says. “It takes you a year to learn on-set etiquette, who your peers are, how to sort someone’s kit out, and then there’s the hairdressing side of it.”
But it was her colour work that she was doing at home, that was getting noticed. “I was doing a lot of BLEACH London style colour”, (think creative, wild and bold), “which didn’t really exist then,” she tells us. “We had a lot of trends that came out of that flat.” Remember the grey hair surge? Or how about dip dye? “Every person that came in that had a weird or transformative hair colour would be big on Tumblr or get picked up by a magazine. I was playing around with colour in a way that was completely different to what I’d learned. I was really lucky everyone loved it.” And it wasn’t long before celebrities started to notice. “I was the biggest Florence and The Machine fan and then I became her hairdresser. I worked with Lily Allen too and we’d do some amazing looks. Sometimes I’d be like, let’s do straight hair and she’d be like ‘Wow Alex, you’re being lazy. I want something out there!’.”
Next came a salon and the launch of BLEACH London on Tumblr. But being only 22, navigating a new brand was hard. “There are so many positives like you’re spontaneous, brave, ambitious, and have no fear. But the negatives that go with it are you make mistakes, you overspend, etc. Working seven days a week managing a company that was growing at speed was stressful.”
Now, with two salons in London and one in LA, Alex describes a typical day in the life as varied, busy, but always fun. In fact, when we asked her about her proudest moment, she replied: “I feel quite proud now actually! Having the business established and settled, I’ve managed to stay in the fashion world – it’s not necessarily the big achievements, the small things matter.”
But it’s much bigger things that Alex has got coming up in the pipeline. “I’m going to Orlando to meet with some American retailers, we’re launching in Holland in July, and we’re also launching in South Africa and hopefully other places in Europe next year!” she shares, excitedly. “And for me, my fashion work, and just seeing what happens I guess!” All while juggling two children, and planning for her wedding in September. Speaking of, we wonder if she said yes to the dress…
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