Fashion is emotional, and the way women look at it is emotional, so it's very important to try to connect with a woman's idea of how she might feel.

I worked at a bunch of salons, and at one, a girl was going out to do a photo shoot for a women's magazine and brought me along to assist her. I remember going on that shoot and thinking, "God, this is great. It's creative, and you get to work with all of these other creative people." At that point I decided that hair would be my in to fashion and all the things I thought I would enjoy - and did enjoy.

It's hard to be shocking now. It's hard to challenge people because the Internet has allowed everyone to become much more worldly, much more visual. It's very hard to surprise people.

I'm not saying that everything I do is always tasteful - and maybe it's not always the normal idea of beauty - but hopefully it's always an empowering idea.

I used to have more meltdowns backstage than I do [now].... It's not that it was ever cool, but right now, it just seems very uncool to have a meltdown. I'm not saying I'll never have one! But I've learnt to stop it just before it happens.

I have a total complex [because of my curls], though, because I got teased a lot as a kid.

I didn't know I wanted to be a hairdresser. I was always interested in fashion and imagery in a very naive way, but it was always an attraction, like glitter balls.