Sinead Kelly London Win The L’Oreal Colour Trophy 2016

We have some exciting news! The Sinéad Kelly London team are the grand final winners of the prestigious L’Oreal Colour Trophy 2016, as well as the winners of the London heats.

It’s a real cause for celebration as the L’Oreal Colour Trophy is the Oscars of the hairdressing world. There’s tough competition from more than 1000 salons across the UK in what is the hairdressing industry’s longest running and most fashion-led hairdressing awards.

Salons must create an inspirational, well-executed and on trend colour on a female model and it’s a real honour to have won as this means we have been judged the best salon in the whole of the UK. We were the only independent salon among the 35 teams in the grand final and beat 500 salons in the regional finals, and L’Oreal say this is a huge achievement.

For our winning look colourist Vas Mikellidis and stylist Sara Bergantini created a fashion forward Autumn/Winter 2016/17 look based on the denim trend on model Natasha Underwood. With bold make-up by Cristiana Maxim, the blue colour really shone through.

However, a lot of work went into creating this fashion-forward style. Our journey began in January, when we came up with a concept. Vas used his drawing skills to come up with this mood board:

The first part of the colour trophy competition required a photographic entry, and we sent off our photos of Natasha’s transformation. It took a long time to create the blue bob, because she started off as a brunette as you can see from the photo below:

STAGE ONE

The second stage of the process was to dye the hair a yellow shade of blonde as you can see from the next photo below:

STAGE TWO

The third stage was the most time-consuming as we took Natasha from yellow blonde to white blonde. This is because any traces of yellow in her hair would turn the blue dye into a green shade and so we had to make her hair completely white. It took 15 hours to do this as the hair needed to be bleached twice. While this was going on, we kept her hair in immaculate condition with in-salon Pro Fiber and take-home Pro-Fiber.

Only when it was white blonde did the colour go on and we ended up with our winning blue look:

STAGE THREE

Our photographic entry secured us a place in the regional heats , where we impressed the judges with our live hairdressing skills and fashion led look. And then it was time for our biggest challenge – the grand final.

The grand final lasted all day and night, starting with an intense day of competition at the L’Oréal International Academy in London’s Hammersmith. The judges, leaders in the industry, were: Issie Churcher from HOB, Steve Rowbottom from Westrow, Paul Dennison from Ken Picton, Errol Douglas MBE, Richard Ward from Richard Ward Hair & Metrospa and Adam Percy from Percy & Reed who were given the task of selecting the nine regional winners and the ultimate winner from the final 36 finalists

After a tough judging process, we all travelled to the luxury intercontinental Hotel at The O2 in London for drinks and a five course meal. But what everyone really cared about was who the winners were! Each of the models showcased their hair in a stunning catwalk show to the 1500 hair industry experts in the room.

The esteemed judging panel each agreed that Sinéad Kelly London had perfectly met the brief, the model look was a perfect example of beautifully executed colour and demonstrated a clear understanding of the latest catwalk trends and they were named as the overall winner of the coveted title. We had won!

The party continued until the early hours of the morning – if you can’t celebrate when you’re named as the best salon in the UK, when can you?

Here are some of our favourite behind-the-scenes pictures of the night so that you can see the atmosphere:

Since then we’ve been overwhelmed by the messages of congratulations of support from our loyal customers. Holly Willoughby even found time to send us a message while she was in the dressing room getting ready for This Morning.

Sinéad Kelly London salon owner, Sinéad Kelly, says: “I am absolutely delighted for my team. Mostly I am proud at what they have achieved. They worked so hard and created an amazing look. I think it is going to take some time to sink in, but we are all delighted. We are looking forward to working closely with L’Oréal Professionnel throughout our winning year and are delighted that they loved our look”

Getting so far in the competition had inspired us to focus on what we do best – colouring and styling hair amd giving our customers an unforgettable experience.

Are you in need of a cut or colour? Come in and see what we can do!