Terri Kay Celebrates 40 Years in Hairdressing

Terri Kay, salon manager at Mark Leeson in Mansfield, UK, and a multi-awardwinning hairdresser, is celebrating 40 years in hairdressing this year. Known for her stunning photographic collections, which have won her two places in the British Hairdressing Awards Hall of Fame, Terri is also at home in the salon looking after clients.

“I think my career has lasted so long because it never feels like an effort,” says Terri. “I have never felt like it’s a chore to go to work. I still enjoy every day.”

It may surprise many who are used to seeing Terri’s incredible collections and her live work on stage, that she still spends around 95% of the time behind the styling chair.

“I love my clients,” she says. “They become like family. You get to know so much about people. I would really miss working behind the chair. I enjoy helping make people feel better.”

And it was in a Mansfield salon, four decades ago, that Terri’s career began at the age of just 16 as part of a YTS training scheme. By the time Terri’s apprenticeship officially started at the John Hawley salon, she was already so confident in her craft, that she was running a busy column exclusively looking after male clients. And so, the seeds were sown for some incredible success with men’s hair collections later in her career.

It was at this salon that Terri met Mark Leeson, unaware at this time just how significant a part Mark, a future British Hairdresser of the Year, would play in her career.

Terri went on to manage a number of salons in the local area and also worked as a freelance hairdresser while her son was young because of the extra flexibility this offered her. Once her son was a little older, Terri began to enter live hairdressing competitions, something she hadn’t done since the beginning of her career. It was while competing on the competition circuit that she met Mark Leeson again. By now, Mark owned his own salon in Mansfield — he’d actually bought the John Hawley salon where they had both trained — and he was keen to expand his team. Mark offered Terri a job at the salon, and stressed that there would also be opportunities to work outside of the salon doing more creative projects such as stage work and assisting on collections.

“Going to work for Mark was definitely a major career move for me,” says Terri. “I’ve done hair shows across the world, and worked on so many award-winning collections, including my own.“

Terri sites many highlights in her career since joining the Mark Leeson team, but possibly the one that stands out the most was working on her first winning collection for the British Hairdressing Awards’ Eastern category, which she went on to win three times.

“This was the first time I had shot a collection for British,” recalls Terri. “I was in tears when I finished it. I found it so stressful, although I enjoyed it immensely. Putting together a collection is exciting and nerve-wracking — a lot of emotion goes into it.”

Continues Terri: “This side of things gets easier over time as you get to know more. I had to learn to think of how hair will look in 2D when I was used to working in 3D. I’ve learned a lot over the years, this is just what comes of doing it regularly.”

One of the biggest challenges when putting together a photographic collection is finding models that won’t appear in every other collection that year. One way that Terri and the team at Mark Leeson have found to get around this issue, is to do photoshoots abroad.

“I did a couple of shoots for Eastern in Australia, one in Sydney and one in Melbourne,” recalls Terri. “Andrew O’Toole, the photographer, lives there so it was easier to go to him. It also meant we got to use models that weren’t in every other collection that year. The model agencies in Australia are also a lot more accommodating when it comes to changing the models’ hair so it was a great decision to shoot there.”

In 2016, Terri joined forces with her Mark Leeson colleague Andrea Giles to create a collection to enter for the Men’s Hairdresser of the Year category of the British Hairdressing Awards.

“Men’s hair was where I started, so creating this first men’s collection was going back to my roots,” says Terri. “I love everything about working with men’s hair — I actually find it easier.”

Something both Terri and Andrea wanted to avoid with their men’s collections were overtly masculine looks

“When we started to do shoots, I became aware of how men’s hair had moved on, from very masculine cuts and beards towards androgyny,” says Terri. “Our collections were beautiful. Men’s hairdressing is moving on from barbering. It’s moved full circle to how it was in the 80s with movements such as the New Romantics.”

Terri and Andrea also made sure that for the first two men’s collections they concentrated on the hair and not the clothes. “We also had the models looking straight at the camera, which got us a lot of front covers,” says Terri. For their third win, the pair changed things up with their 2020 collection featuring two models in each shot. “This is my favourite collection of the three,” says Terri. “The other two were beautiful, but the 2020 collection felt more raw, which I liked.”

Terri’s inspiration for her collections and other creative work comes from a range of sources. “I take inspiration from the catwalk, pop culture, and music. It’s also important to listen to younger people — They have ideas and they are the future.”

Terri also acknowledges the huge influence Mark Leeson has had on her work. “My biggest mentor has to be Mark because we share a lot of ideas,” she says. “He listens as well as advising. He has a good eye and a creative mind.”

Terri believes it’s vital for anyone wanting to enjoy a long and successful career like hers, to be aware that you never know everything.

“My main advice is to keep learning, don’t let it become mundane. The best thing about our job is making a suggestion to a client about how they can make changes and the client trusting you and going with it. Don’t just do 20 bobs in a day. When I was 21, it was perms, highlights and blow-dries. The great thing about today is that everyone is different. It has definitely changed for the better.”