I was asked back to Willis York in 2017 to design the new colour bar. The success of the salon as a stable for young talent with a string of awards and in particular as an innovator in colour had me thinking of a ‘laboratory’.
A laboratory for the science of colour and for nurturing minds.
As we’d done before, the salon owner Bex Brent and I wished to celebrate the building itself with it’s quirks and eccentricities whilst injecting the strong innovative feminine edge that Bex herself represents and champions.
This ‘insertion’ into the first floor warehouse plays on a movement from light to dark, it’s expressed with delicate forms in the strongest of materials beside dark sheer drops of fabric. Meanwhile the statuesque mirrors reflect all of these elements upon the building itself. In the middle of it all is the ‘lab bench’ as close to the mark as possible.
My brief is always open here at Willis York but functionality is key. The steel shelving exposes the tubes of colour creatively yet it’s entirely practical for the hairdressers to work from. The lab bench has been custom designed to take exactly what is required, with longer drawers for rolls of foil and inset bins for waste and recycling.
I’m a kid in a candy shop with a brief like this!
Ironwork: Bill Martell, Metalmorphic
Cabinetry produced by: Renalls Joinery
Photography: Bonny Beattie
