Hj interviews ashleigh hodges on autumn colours, techniques and the versatile davines view range

HJ picked Ashleigh Hodges brains about all things autumnal colour, the techniques to try for the new season ahead and the versatile Davines View demi range. 

How would you describe the Davines View colour? What do you use it for? What kind of looks can you create with it?

View is a demi, tone-on-tone range. It is acidic, so it gives an extremely high shine. The formula is actually up to 99% biodegradable so it will completely disappear from waterways in three weeks, which is incredible for hair colour. That sustainability factor is something that I absolutely love. Quite frankly I use View in most colour services now. It’s my go-to. It has a lovely synergy between other Davines colour ranges, such as Century of Light and with our permanent range Mask with Vibrachrom. It helps speed up application time and gives seamless tones, View takes up to 20 minutes depending on porosity of hair. For clients with darker bases, View enhances natural tones with high shine and you’re always going to get a blended regrowth.

What are the USPs of View from a sustainability perspective?

Every product that Davines produce is so well thought out. With everything they do, they put people and planet before profit. They think about everything from the size of the bottles, to the material the product is in. The plastic is high grade so it can be recycled in any recycling bins and they try to carbon offset the delivery of products as much as they can. The Davines UK team are thinking hard about getting the products to the salons, how the salons can recycle the products and even what the client is going home with.

Tell us about some of the colouring techniques that you are loving right now?

Tom and I have been building in-salon techniques over the last couple of Davines campaigns. Sculptoning is one of them. It’s about looking at someone’s hair as a sculpture, rather than individual pieces of hair. As colourists we often look at hair in terms of sections and think about where we place our foils. But we don’t always look at how the hair is falling. Sculptoning is about hand-picking and hand-placing colour. When it came to Madeline’s look from our Capsule Collection (the look features copper-peachy curls) we handpicked the placement areas for two ponytails and we sculpted colour through them. We also created a technique called Graduated Blonde. This is about taking how we think about cutting hair and applying it to colouring techniques. For example, Tom would think about graduation in a cut, but this was about graduating colour throughout the hair. We worked around a bowl cut to infuse shades of lavender blondes and warmer blondes so the tones offset each other. It gave an almost pearlescent look. Using a Graduated Blonde technique we could personalise it, and ensure a really even blend.

Tell us about the Davines Portraits of People project…

This long-term project is all about creating hair for people, not doll heads. Whether we’re doing it for a model or client we want to make sure that we’re making their colour the best it can be – for them. All our techniques are suggestions, not a directive. One of the key things I teach people is: “Hair colour is a science experiment with nature”. The person in front of us has a unique biology, and nature always gives us a curve ball. Thankfully Davines have the science to help us deal with any scenario. What works on one person, might not work on the next. Equally what worked on one client at the beginning of the year, might not work on them by the end of the year.

Where do you look to for colour inspiration? Do you get inspired by the hair industry… or do you look outside of it?

I like to get inspiration from outside the industry actually. I feel like you can get a fresh take. I also think clients are looking to art, culture and things in their daily lives rather than other hairdressers. If you can talk to them about shades they understand, that’s going to resonate with them. This is the formula I always use: You + Client = end result. If I don’t take my client into account, I’ve lost half my formula.

What are your tips for colourists on post-summer hair colour?

In terms of colour, ask clients what they’re wearing this Autumn (are they genuinely shifting to more autumnal colours?) where are they working. Basically, is their hair going to look good whatever their surroundings and in the 6-8 weeks when we don’t see them. With the Davines Sunlight Hours collection we explored what hair colour looked like at 6am, it might be really pure; whereas at 6pm it would look more dusky. That’s why the client should always be the second part of the colour equation. This is a sponsored post in collaboration with Davines.