Looking back at london collections: men aw15 with dion paden

New Fudge Professional brand ambassador,  men’s stylist and owner of Hooka hair group in Liverpool, Dion Paden, joined the cult hair brand for the autumn/winter season of London Collections: Men, his first ever step into the world of fashion and catwalk creations. Along with assisting creative director, John Vial, backstage at Christopher Shannon, Matthew Miller and Lee Roach shows, Dion was part of the hair team for The Fudge Fix salon. Here he shares his diary, along with how he prepared for it, the highlights, and what he has gained from the experience. Days one and two The whole weekend was amazing! I spent the first two days backstage working with John Vial and the Fudge Professional session team preparing the models’ hair for the Christopher Shannon, Matthew Miller and Lee Roach shows. Although I’m hot on fashion, I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s been such an eye opener for me. The whole vibe backstage was really exciting; I was amazed at the size of the team of people who work backstage for a single show. I expected it to be chaos but it was the opposite, it was so well organised, the whole backstage operation ran so smoothly. When we first got backstage, we were shown mood boards of the hair looks for each collection and John demonstrated how to achieve these and which Fudge Professional products we would need. We then got the models in the chairs and it was all go go go, re-creating the looks on the models, ready for the show start time. You can be styling anything from 10 to 30 models, and you usually have about three hours to finish the hair...alongside the makeup team, clothes stylist and choreographer also needing the models, so it’s a slick timed operation. The look for Christopher Shannon was inspired by ‘90s bowl hair’, as if the boys have been out dancing all night long; the hair was sprayed with water and then blow-dried flat against the scalp into a bowl shape. For Matthew Miller, the look had an element of groomed, but with an undone feel. At Lee Roach, we created a cool dual hair texture of matte versus high shine, which was my favourite look out of all the shows Fudge Professional styled for. Visually, it looked incredible on the catwalk, as you could really see the contrast from the matte and shiny finish. It was really impressive seeing the look come together; first, the hair was soaked in Fudge Professional Sea Salt Spray to give a matte finish, then mesh was held tightly over random panels of the hair and blow-dried with loads of Fudge Professional Skyscraper hairspray to create super shiny sections. Days three and four For the second half of London Collections: Men, I worked in the Fudge Fix hair pop-up salon as resident barber, where I got to cut and style a great bunch of guys who were either working at LC: M or visiting the event. The hair team at The Fix was made up of brand ambassadors from all over the country. It was great to get to work with other creative stylists and I felt that I learnt a lot from them and left feeling like I had made some really good friends from the Fudge Professional family. Looking back on LC:M AW15 When I look back, there are so many highlights. The whole weekend had many ‘firsts’: from meeting such a great gang of people, to getting involved in creating the amazing looks on the models, which was a completely different approach to styling in-salon that I’m used to. I also felt that I got to know the Fudge Professional portfolio of products better and learned more about what you can achieve when cocktailing the many different styling products. It was also really cool to go and watch the shows, seeing the models on the catwalk and getting some fashion inspiration! I also have to say that I loved the celeb spotting - I saw David Gandy, Dermot O’Leary, Nick Grimshaw, Dougie from McBusted and Tinie Tempah sitting front row at the shows! Taking LC:M into the salon The main thing I’ve gained from the experience is self-confidence. I’ve been wholly focused on my business for the past 10 years, so it was good to step away and put myself in a position where I had to stretch outside of my comfort zone. I also learned different ways of styling hair, which I can’t wait to demonstrate to my team back at Hooka, along with all the looks we created for the shows. It also puts you ahead of the curve in terms of being able to advise clients on upcoming men’s hair trends. I saw a lot of undone looks with hair styled forward with movement which makes a change from the classic pompadour and elevated quiffs that have been popular. I have a feeling we will be seeing a lot more guys going for soft perms in 2015!