“This is a calling card for change”

‘You – Hair Has No Gender’ is the new campaign from the iconic Trevor Sorbie, and marks an important moment in the brand’s 45 year history. It celebrates its collaboration with model and activist Rain Dove, the end of gendered pricing across its six-strong group, and its partnership with The Dresscode Project – a UK salon first – to create safe salon spaces for both guests and its teams. Discover how it found the confidence to change, and how the brand hopes it will inspire others with its journey…

CREATIVE DIRECTION BY GIUSEPPE STELITANO

PHOTOGRAPHY BY AUSTN FISCHER

It was an Instagram tag that started the ball rolling. Activist and model Rain Dove (@raindovemodel) was visiting local salons in Hampstead to ask about pricing disparity between men’s and women’s services, and tagged Trevor Sorbie. Spotted by Bex Ohta (the brand’s head of marketing and PR) and Bree Davie (Hampstead co-owner and group general manager), it shone a spotlight on a disparity across the sixstrong salon group.

When the flagship salon in Covent Garden launched 45 years ago, there were no men’s or women’s prices. Then as the additional sites followed – Hampstead, Richmond, Manchester, Bristol and Brighton – each decided on its own services menu, leaving half the salons with gendered pricing, half without. Rain’s videos on the subject helped not only restart a conversation about pricing, but also a wider discussion on the message gendered pricing sent, and creating a safe space for everybody in Trevor Sorbie salons. It also fuelled a relationship between the two that has climaxed with Rain featuring as the face of the brand’s new consumer campaign “You – Hair Has No Gender”, under the guiding hand of creative director, Giuseppe Stelitano.

“I do a lot of social experiments and try to test how far we have progressed as a society,” explains Rain about the videos shared on social media. “With hair, this space is not equalised. I wanted to find out why people felt justified to charge those different prices. There are people, especially our elders, who have been loyal to a salon for decades, and are paying sometimes close to twice the amount of money as their societal male counterparts for the same kind of short haircut. It’s sexist, and it’s easy to eradicate, just by making some changes in your salon. You don’t have to lose profit.”

Of course, a focus on modernising pricing isn’t new in itself – the past decade has seen an increase in forward-thinking salons establish “gender neutral” pricing and, more recently, take proactive steps on creating LGBTQ+ safe spaces. But the significance of the Trevor Sorbie activity comes alongside its collaboration with the US-based The Dresscode Project.

The latter’s mission is “to empower and help educate hair stylists and barbers to give people haircuts that help them look the way they feel”, and has worked with brands such as Pantene to help it be more inclusive and to deliver content in a more authentic way. Trevor Sorbie is The Dresscode Project’s first UK salon partner.

“The best part of our jobs is when you do someone’s hair and they see themselves for the first time,” smiles Kristen Rankin, The Dresscode Project’s founder. “It’s really impactful – and I’m talking about a regular hair salon experience. Now take someone who has never felt themselves and the mirror has been their enemy for a long time. And you look at them after your haircut and they’re smiling. Everybody deserves to be able to go into a salon, get a decent haircut and feel good about themselves.”

Rain takes that one step further. “The problem with a lot of salon pricing is that it treats people as ideas but not as individuals. Haircuts themselves are individualistic; the person sitting in your chair cannot be an idea. They are an individual trying to realise their individuality.”

Rain’s videos and involvement “gave us the confidence to change things sooner”, says Bree. “We had already started to close the price gap over time in the salons that had gendered pricing, but this project gave us a sense of urgency to move things along. We spoke internally about how this was going to work, and the team was really behind it.” Through its training with The Dresscode Project it addressed vital concerns. Some stylists in regional salons were worried about losing gents guests where the price gap was higher, so the brand identified established frequent clients and offered them a loyalty discount for a set time. “Then you’re not losing 10 per cent of your business,” explains Bree, “but anybody new coming in will have the equal prices. That gave our team the confidence that they would not lose existing guests.”

There was also a generational concern over language. “A lot of our team in their 50s and 60s really struggle with the word ‘queer’. To them, it’s offensive. We talked about how we wouldn’t use that to describe them,” adds Bree. “It’s opening up the conversation, everyone being honest with how they feel and creating a space where people can feed that back,” agrees Bex. “It’s about that personalisation and identity – not just for the guests, but also for the team. We want to make sure we’re creating safe spaces for both.”

The marketing campaign – beautifully styled yet simply delivered with black and white production – harks back to classic Yves Saint Laurent imagery. “The visual is really theatrical, it’s creating a feeling of drama. As hairdressers we’re almost performing every day on our stage, behind the chair. It’s not going to be what you expect from Trevor Sorbie,” explains Giuseppe. “And the black and white idea, there’s a depth to it, it’s timeless and there’s no colour – no pink, no blue. Let’s just create something that stands out. I didn’t want to use this topic as a trend without having any meaning.”

For Rain, Trevor Sorbie “is an incredibly important salon for this discussion”. “It’s the salons that have visibility and space in the industry that are the issue. They don’t want to change because it’s the way they’ve always done it, and they feel they’re too far along to make any changes. Trevor Sorbie proves that isn’t the case. It saw it, addressed it and changed it within a year.”

“But we’re not saying you should follow our formula,” Bex chimes in. “Look at your business, you’ll have the answer.”

“This is a calling card for change,” nods Rain in agreement. “People are already struggling with so much; the hair experience is supposed to be a place where, for just a moment, you have control over your life and you’re seen as an individual, and not an idea. And that’s it.”

To see more from the shoot and hear more from Rain, Kristin and the Trevor Sorbie team, visit creativeheadmag.com @creativeheadmag