MISS INDEPENDENT Charlene Fernandez By Louise May
Working out of her Armadale space, Charlene Fernandez is the industry’s most dynamic independent stylist and winning AHIA Independent Stylist of the Year 2021 is a testament to her incredible work. Formerly Creative Director of a large Melbourne salon group with over 200 staff, she is now busy making her mark on the industry with her inimitable style.
She has had the opportunity to work backstage at NYFW assisting the best in the business, including being entrusted to give Gigi Hadid’s hair a final once over, working on set at campaign and editorial shoots as well as working to help to educate the next generation of hairdressing talent. A powerhouse of technique when it comes to all things cut, colour and style, she is certainly a name to watch. Charlene was born and raised in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne. Her parents migrated to Australia from Karachi, Pakistan in 1984. She falls in the middle of 2 sisters and has all the complexities, she says, that are usually associated with the middle child. She has a huge extended family with her mum being one of 7 siblings and dad one of 10. This means dozens of aunties and uncles and hundreds of cousins. The average family party would usually consist of up to 100 people gathering to eat, dance, laugh and celebrate. Editor Louise May caught up with Charlene recently and got an insight into what inspired Charlene to choose Hairdressing as a career and what makes her a truly unstoppable force. “My life has always been full of people and my family is the reason why community is such a significant thing to me,” says Charlene…. “My family are the reason that I am able to love so many different types of people. They taught 16
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me so much about relationships, communication and connection. At the same time as gaining a huge sense of belonging from my family, they have also been a contributing factor to some of the insecurities that I carried into my adult life. When I was younger things just were what they were but as I grew up and started to be my own person, I realised how conflicting it was at times having migrant parents. This influence, teamed with a large and opinionated family made it challenging at times to express myself how I wanted to. I was always too loud, often called an attention seeker and was just too damn sensitive. I spent many years trying to change myself and erase these labels to finally come to the realisation that these attributes are perhaps my greatest gifts after all. I was always a big being. A chubby baby, a fat girl and now a large, full-figured woman. The ‘fat’ wound took me a long time to even address as something that needed healing. I teetered around it for years cos I thought it was just me, feeling sorry for myself. I thought, people have been through so much worse, and I was just a young fatty, I need to just get over myself. It was only in the last few years that I realised what was at the core of my fat girl story, and that was the deeply engrained belief that I was not good enough to exist.
