He’s just been named an Icon of Irish Hairdressing – now Paul Stafford and his wife Leisa will be sharing their expertise with Inspire readers…
For almost forty years Paul Stafford has been one of Ireland’s most courageous and adventurous hairdressers. His creative shows have had standing ovations from Paris to New York while his upmarket salon on Belfast’s Lisburn Road caters for all looks, from big and beautiful blow dries to fashion-forward cuts.
Stafford Hair is led from the front by Paul and his wife Leisa who have been working together since he moved from Dundalk to Belfast as a teenager.
And it’s a testament to his work and creative spirit that he has been given the award of Icon of Irish Hairdressing by the Irish Hairdressers Federation at a glittering ceremony in Kilkenny’s Lyrath Estate.
After two tough years in the hairdressing industry, the honour and the ceremony was special to all in attendance as a celebration of the unsung heroes whose artistic talent makes people happy every day.
For Paul, the award was a humbling experience.
‘It was the fact that people recognised the work we have done and picked out particular collections of ours or shows that they liked,’ he says.
‘That was very humbling as to be told that you have had some kind of impact on someone else’s career and inspired them to do something creatively is hugely rewarding.’
Growing up first in Belfast and then in Dundalk – his parents moved the family south to get away from The Troubles – Paul was obsessed with music and the style that goes with it.
‘I was always interested in things like hair and music and clothes. All my family have always been in that sub culture mindset.
‘My uncles were all Teddy Boys and I remember them getting all dandified up.
‘But things like punk and the late seventies two tone revival made me curious about what hair meant to certainly young people.’
He developed a fascination with hair and the connection that had to rock stars and how they styled their looks. ‘The first haircut I was ever obsessed with was Elvis,’ he says, remembering being glued to the television on a Saturday afternoon as The King performed in Jailhouse Rock or Blue Hawaii. ‘His was a work of art, an incredibly intricate detailed personification of rock and roll hair.’
The fascination continued apace and by the time he was 12 or 13, Paul had decided he wanted to be a hairdresser. He started messing around with haircuts his friends wanted in his mam’s kitchen at that age, where people would often turn up with a picture cut from a magazine of David Bowie, Paul Weller or Debbie Harry and ask him to recreate it.
‘So I went to work in a salon and immediately I just felt like this is where I belong.’
He started out as a Saturday boy and learned his craft from the ground up. ‘Working in the salon was a whole different mindset,’ Paul says of learning the technical and commercial skills that come with being a good hairdresser. After all, a happy client is someone who leaves a salon with hair that they like and that also suits them.
‘Before I was just doing it for fun and to hang out with people. I was able to combine that sense of street style and interpret creative hair into a much more commercial environment. It was where I learned everything and refined all the detail and it taught me how to appreciate and enjoy and feel good about what I was doing,
‘When I worked in the salon I really cared about how customers felt and I wanted to make them happy and feel like I was invested in them and that is something that has never left me. ‘And I feel that whether I am in the salon or doing shows or shoots, you really want people to leave feeling like ‘I love my hair and I love what you’ve done’.
The pandemic has been a big blow to the salon industry which is now being hit by the cost of living crisis too. From Dublin to the West End salons are going under – even huge names like Nicky Clarke and Charles Worthington have been affected. But Paul feels the move towards home haircuts is one that is disastrous for the industry. ‘A lot of hairdressers realised during lockdown how the potential route for them not to go back and work in a salon was open, and they could either freelance, go to people’s houses. ‘I have no problem with that – that was thriving way before the pandemic and the gates only widened.
‘But the salon business itself has suffered a little bit of a backlash not just from that area but the fact that it has been restricted in state supports and also from hairdressing companies,’ he says.
‘In the short term, this is going to have an impact on the high street and the future of young hairdressers. Salons are places where we teach people and educate them not just hairdressing skills but communication skills.
‘A whole generation is going to lose out on technical and widespread skills because of this because they have never worked in a salon where this type of hairdressing exists.
‘I think great salons will survive but they’ll be more thinned out and there will be less places to employ young people, as we hairdressers will move forward learning to live with the fact that we no longer have that surge of young talent coming forward and that is a shame.’
After working in some of the big London for a time, Leisa, his thengirlfriend came back to Belfast with big ideas and the pair had a vision for a salon of their own.
They first worked in Zakks together before moving to the first Stafford salon which was backed by Zakks before setting out on their own. ‘We started with a receptionist and a junior,’ Paul says of the first salon bearing his name. ‘For the first six months we struggled to get people in the door but then something just clicked.’
It caused a stir though and they worked from 8am until 9pm every night in the beginning. Now in their third salon incarnation, married with two daughters in their late teens and early twenties themselves, Leisa and Paul still do work all hours.
‘Leisa is the big unsung hero of the two of us,’ Paul says. ‘I obviously have no shame and I am happy to put myself out there and I like talking about what we do but Leisa is always in the background. ‘She is the organ grinder keeping the machine running. In difficult times she will step up to the plate and make the decisions that maybe I need to be pushed into making. ‘When it comes to being in the spotlight and doing the stuff that gets the salon attention she has always stepped away from that side of things but creatively Leisa has more of a spectrum of skills than I will ever have.’
Some people might baulk at the idea of working with your partner as well as living with them but for the Staffords this has never been a problem, though like any normal couple, there are times when arguments happen.
‘We make a good team,’ says Paul. ‘We don’t always see eye to eye. But when we have a disagreement we do it with a view that ultimately what we want is the same goal.
We might take different routes to achieve that but ultimately what we want to find is a compromise because if we don’t then we have to go our separate ways and that just isn’t going to happen.’
They work well together in business and in life, he says, because they have a similar outlook on music, style but most importantly how to treat people.
‘We genuinely care about our staff – and our clients – and their wellbeing,’ Paul says. ‘We like to lead from the front and our staff know we have their backs. ‘We want them to share this great journey we are on and every single one of them has played their part in our success along the way.
‘I would be lying if I said we could switch off – we don’t, we even dream about hair, we are obsessed with it but that’s who we are. And we are obviously obsessed with each other – we have been together for such a long time and I can’t imagine what it would be like not to have Leisa in everything I do.’ They both love style which Paul insists is a different thing from following fashion and his current looks come from the 1940s and 1950s.
‘I view my style as a reflection of where my head is at and this constant desire to change, not just not just how I look but taking the risks that I believe make dressing up enjoyable. ‘At the moment I am going through a very tailored stage. Maybe it is a reaction to everyone being so dressed down during the pandemic that I just love dressing up.
‘I feel now I am dressing more like I dressed in the 1980s – Forties and Fifties suits, wide legged trousers. It also makes me feel better.
‘When I get up in the morning and get dressed for work I feel like I am giving an absolutely professional appearance to my clients so they know I am taking my job seriously. It is all those things that make me feel like I am committed.’
And their teamwork is something that seems to work well – clients come from all over the country to the Belfast salon and they’ve had countless celebrities through their door from members of The Corrs to the actress Amanda Donohoe and violinist Vanessa Mae who Paul admits he didn’t recognise at the time as he was so busy with another didn’t recognise.
But it’s not the celebrities Paul is interested in, more the people coming through the doors of the salon every day with their unusual requests – one even brought a photo of her Afghan hound to indicate the colour she wanted her hair. ‘A lot of people come into the salon with very fixed ideas of what they want and they haven’t taken into consideration their face shape, their hair type and we can identify that very quickly,’ says Paul. ‘There’s no point being able to cut hair brilliantly if the haircut doesn’t suit the person underneath.
‘The buzz for me is having the client walk out of the salon feeling great and looking great.’ With this in mind, Paul and Leisa will be offering their expertise to Inspire readers from next week in a new Hair Clinic column where they will help you deal with everything from flyaway locks to hair loss to dodgy dye jobs.
