Lewis Pallett is a session stylist and extensions specialist with clients all around the world – we got him on the phone to find out how he’s done it all...
“I have a client who lives in Jersey and they fly me out all the time – it’s lovely,” Lewis Pallett tells us as we quiz him about his career. “They took me to France on a boat, and took me around the island, it’s so nice!” When he’s not being flown out to Jersey, Lewis is looking after his clients all over the world. “I have a column of clients that I do in my friend’s salon when I’m not shooting, I’m an extensions specialist so I have my extension clients, clients that I travel to, international clients, and I also do session work,” he laughs. “There’s some weeks when I’m super busy and then there are some months when it goes really quiet. I think that’s just the nature of the industry and it’s something you have to get your head around at the beginning.” In fact, it’s the not knowing that Lewis enjoys – every day is different. But speaking of beginning, you’re probably thinking, well how did he get here? Let’s take it back…
Originally from Suffolk, Lewis began his hairdressing journey in college and actually completed his NVQ Level 1 and 2 in a year. “I was a little bit older, and I knew what I wanted to do so when I got started, they didn’t hold me back.” From there, he started working in a salon. “I was actually really lucky,” he says, “The owner could see I was keen so whenever she had a client in, she would get a similar haircut in for me so I would do lots of training.” From here, Lewis moved to London, eventually ending up in Cobella in Selfridges. “I worked there for a while and then I got poached to go to another salon because I was an extensions specialist,” he tells us. Unfortunately, the salon went bankrupt and Lewis was made redundant, but this is when his session career began.
“I had kind of dabbled with session, I’d dipped my toe in a little bit and had tried assisting a few different people and I really enjoyed it,” he shares. “So I wanted to try session to see how I got on.” Soon enough, he became Samantha Hillerby’s first assistant. “I had done a couple of jobs with her previously, but I was with her for four and a half years,” he shares. “It was amazing, she taught me so much and I learned so much from her about the industry, about hairdressing, about everything!” The best piece of advice she gave him? “Pay your tax! I was always told by Sam to save your tax in a separate account and I’ve never been great with money, but I’ve always paid my tax because she just drilled this into me at the beginning,” he laughs. “Make sure when you get paid, you separate your tax, put into a separate account, and you don’t touch it.”
Juggling his session career and his clients on days off or in between jobs, Lewis reached a point where he was ready to stand on his own. Which leads us to today! His advice? “Say yes to everything. You never know where something is going to go,” he says. “I was once asked to do a punk hair story. Punk is not my vibe – I do beautiful, natural hair, but this turned out to be one of my favourite images I’ve ever done, and it came from doing a job I didn’t want to do. I think that’s one of the things in this industry is you never know where something is going to lead. All of my celebrity clients have come from doing free editorials.” Which, of course, led us to ask, how is it working with stars such as Minnie Driver, Hannah Waddingham and Steph McGovern? “Celebrities are just normal people, they are exactly like us,” he says. “There have been moments in my career where, of course, I’ve wanted to fangirl but I’m very professional. Don’t get me wrong, I get excited, but at the end of the day, it’s your job and professionalism is everything.”
When it comes to his proudest moments, for Lewis, it was hands down being nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award. “I was doing Hannah Waddingham’s hair for a Christmas Special. We’d just come off the back of Eurovision and it was one of the hottest days of the year. Working in hot temperatures as a hairdresser is hard anyway, but I had to do a Hollywood wave – a full on deep set finger wave, dry,” he recalls. “It was roasting, but I found out through an Instagram post that I’d been nominated for a BAFTA Craft Award, and it was so unexpected. I love my job and there are days that are really hard and for somebody to look at my hair on a screen and choose my work. It makes you feel incredible, so I feel really proud of that.”
Speaking of exciting, what’s coming up in the pipeline, we ask. “The fun thing about session work is I never know what’s happening! I have some exciting jobs coming up but nothing I can talk about…” Some more trips around islands maybe?
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