Jo o'neill: a career in colour

Jo O'Neill is international technical director for TONI&GUY. Here, we find out more about her career in colour so far. When did you decide you wanted to be a hairdresser? I initally wanted to be an actress in the theatre. While studying drama, I thought I should learn either make up or hair to help me with roles. I chose hair and I was instantly gripped. Gradually I came away from the acting and focused on the hair. Where did you train? I trained at Stuart Stanley salon. The owner, Carmel, loved colour and she passed her enthusiasm on to me. What was your first job like? My very first job was as an academy assistant at the Alan Paul Academy in Liverpool. I was there for six months and I loved every minute, although I can still remember how much my feet hurt at the end of a hard day's work. When did you decide you wanted to focus on colour? I started my career as a stylist doing both cut and colour, but there were very few clients that left my chair without having had their hair coloured. It was during an in-salon training session with a L'Oreal Colour Technician that I just knew what I wanted to do – it was one of those 'light bulb' moments. I wanted a career in education, so I left Liverpool and started to work for L'Oreal Professionnel before finally getting the opportunity to work for TONI&GUY and the rest, as they say, is history. What is it about being a colourist that you love? Being a colourist is just so, so creative! Colour dominates everything in our lives and people have such an emotional reaction to colour. Colour can transform a good haircut into a GREAT haircut. It can enhance beauty, create drama, and set the mood, so it's quite a powerful way to transform a client's hair. I still love that feeling of creating that ultimate colour for a client and making them look and feel incredible. What is your average day like? No two days are ever the same and that's what I love about my job and the company I work for. I can be teaching at our flagship academy in London, travelling around the world teaching or presenting on stage or working on our annual collections as part of the TONI&GUY Artistic Team with our global creative director, Sacha Mascolo-Tarbuck. It's the variety that I love and teaching our staff training programme helps to keep me in touch with the new talent emerging. Do you still go on courses to boost your colour knowledge and techniques? I work with an incredibly talented team and we are always sharing ideas and developing new approaches and techniques. It's an incredibly creative environment to work in. I learn something new every day. You can learn a ot from how other people approach things too and I love working with our manufactures trying out new products that they develop. Part of TONI&GUY's philosophy is that you never stop learning and I couldn't agree more. What piece of advice would you give to hairdressing students who think that they might want to focus on colour? The best piece of advice for any budding colourist would be to really learn your colour theory. Once you know the rules, you can break them and create some really exciting work. Take inspiration not from what people dom but from how they do it!