With Steven Meisel, I'd looked at his work from afar and always loved it, and when I started to work with him, I was blown away. He taught me so much about looking at women and looking at images.

Fashion was a very insider industry then - it was very closed. So I didn't really know what I wanted to do.

I was building my work, and it took me a long time. For a good five or six years I was just kind of bobbing around, doing everything and anything.

I haven't got a good reputation with pain.

To be a good hairdresser, you have to understand what the vision is of the designer or the photographer and then sort of add your thing.

Beautiful things are different.

I got into hairdressing and moved from Dorset to London, where I got an apprenticeship at Vidal Sassoon. This was around '83 or '84. I was working on South Molton Street, which was then the epicenter of all the shops. It was like a catwalk. So I did my apprenticeship there, but I wasn't successful.