Trevor sorbie celebrates 50 years of inspiring hair

When a young boy started an apprenticeship in hairdressing at the age of 15, little did he know he would become one of the most innovative, inspiring and respected hairdressers of his generation. Trevor Sorbie, who is celebrating his 50th year in the industry, is loved the world over, and has created some of the most awe-inspiring images in the history of hairdressing. Having won HJ’s British Hairdresser of the Year four times, he has clinched every global title going for his creativity, which sees him constantly pushing the boundaries. His live shows were legendary, as he continually wowed audiences and presented something no one had even thought possible. But what is it like to be Trevor Sorbie? “I don’t see myself as an inventor of styles but creating mistakes that have worked,” he says. “When I was working on shoots and shows I was always searching for something different and sometimes accidents happen in your favour, which go on to make hairdressing history.” See some of Trevor's favourite images - and hear the sometimes surprising stories behind them! - below... [hji-gallery-legacy] The Wedge “This is The Wedge, which was taken in 1974 while I was working with Vidal Sassoon. He was doing a show in Paris and asked some of us if we could design some new haircuts for the collection. I did a one-length haircut, very short round the hairline but long on the inside, and it didn’t look very good. “I brushed it back to try to salvage it and out popped this great style! I was in a bar with Christopher Brooker and he was playing with some paper, folding it in different ways. He suddenly leant across to me and said he had a name for the haircut – The Wedge. And that is where the name came from. It was the first haircut to get a double-page spread in Vogue. I still love looking at it today; it’s more sculptural than a haircut.”   [youtube width="510" height="287"]http://youtu.be/o1z6y_wgvtU[/youtube]   The Scrunch “When I was working at John Frieda we would wash and cut the client’s hair, then finger dry it to get the finished look. One day I had a client with long porous hair who wanted the John Frieda look, and I knew it was going to take forever. “I had two clients waiting and I had to speed the whole process up, so I took a handful of hair and put the dryer into the hair. I held the hair in my hand while it cooled down, then let it go and I got tremendous volume that if I had stood there for a week I would never have got. “So I tried it on other heads of hair and I got the same result every time, and that is how The Scrunch was born. To this day the technique lives on and there aren’t many women in the world who haven’t had their hair dried in this way.” The Flame “I was asked by an advertising agency to make a girl’s hair look like it was on fire. I was working with photographer Alastair Hughes at a studio in London. This hair took about five hours to create. On the day some material caught fire from the lights and we had to evacuate the studio. “As we all ran out the model’s hair looked like it was on fire with billowing smoke behind her! I used poster paints rather than traditional hair colour with an artist’s airbrush to get the dark and light contrast – I don’t think that had ever been done before. “And of course it was the days before retouching, so you had to do it right first time round, which was a discipline instilled in me by Vidal.” Fusion “I’ve always been friends with Anthony Mascolo and we had wanted to work together for some time. When we eventually came together this is one of the shots that we created. The photography is fantastic and it’s a good example of hair, clothes, model and lighting all working together as one. It’s one of my favourite images.”   [youtube width="510" height="287"]http://youtu.be/0TVwkApNlkE[/youtube]   Concorde “This was a wig for a show in Switzerland in 1976. It was one of the first shows I did and I used wigs on the models so I could get more looks out of them. When this was shot, the model is standing inside the backdrop and we’ve pulled her dress into a point so it looks like she has been shot out of a canon and is moving.” The Frizz “I created this look for Salon International in the mid-nineties. Long hair was set on a hair pin and clamped with an iron, then when I brushed it out I got this amazing frizziness. It worked very well and since then I have seen it done by a lot of other hairdressers. I was inspired by a picture of model Marie Helvin and she had this amazing frizzy hair. I heard it was done by pin setting, so I took that and played with it to get this result.”   [youtube width="510" height="287"]http://youtu.be/FRCR-mYiMK4[/youtube]   Stone “I wanted to make hair look like it was a carving made from stone. The waves are foam that you sit on, and I carved the shape out with a hot knife. We put thick, heavy make-up on the model and the poor thing couldn’t move. “We put the foam piece on her head and as she turned round to tell me she couldn’t breathe she cracked her make-up. “However, it actually enhances the picture, so it was a mistake that worked!” The Wolfman "The Wolfman is my favourite invention, as it was a totally new way of thinking. The time was 1980 and people were still creating geometric styles with scissors, but I believed the opposite could work. So instead of cutting with scissors I cut with a razor, which gave a feather-like texture. The opposite of good colour is bad colour so I did a regrowth. I put three techniques together and what came out was The Wolfman. Punk inspired me at the time, and to this day people talk about it. Anything that stands the test of time is a classic – and this is."