Last weekend I traveled up North to spent my time photographing in Manchester! Asked to go photograph Matthew Berry’s hair creation for a Haute Couture Wella competition called TrendVision which has been running since 2002. It is an event where hair artists from all over the world can showcase their creations for the world to see. This will be Matts first time entering this particular comp.

Meeting Matt and the team at Wella studios we started with a few snaps indoors there before heading off into the streets of Manchester!

Asking Matt what inspired his look and what was the process to reach the final result he said “ What I had imagined was originally inspired by my favourite Disney villain Cruella DeVil having two different colours on either side of her head. Pastel shades have been pushed and pushed into popularity by the hair fashion industry for the past 2-3 years and quite honestly its starting to bore me a bit now. So, I decided to swim against the current and add a bit of my own creativity with this bold concoction that is anything but Stonewashed. 

I wanted to create a Avant Garde look using an entirely new range of colours by Wella Professionals called ‘Colour Fresh Create’. Create is a very fashion forward colour range consisting of 12 colours which are all intermixable giving almost unlimited colour possibilities and OFCOURSE it comes complete with a diluter to ‘pastelise’ the shades. The colours that I decided upon came to me in a dream, when I woke up I thought to my self that it would really work. I used a purple as the base colour with flashes of pink on one side and flashes of blue on the other side. All in all I used 8 different colour mixtures to make this idea really real.”

Our main location for the photo shoot was at Albert Square. Though it was clear sky’s and mid day sun, with a defuser in hand (Matt’s hands) we began shooting. We weren’t there for long but we did seem to draw a lot of attention, were we a rare occurrence for Mancunians? Londoners don’t even take a second glance let alone stop, stare and snap photographs of whats happening in front of them (I do hope those that did take photos crop me out of their shots!).

Matthew Berry has been in the hairdressing industry for 8 years now and throughout his career has entered several competitions. In the first few years during his training he reached the UK final for apprentice of the year and also the UK final for another Wella competition called Exposure. Since being qualified he has won ladies Hairdressing Champion 2015 along with two 1st place awards and one 3rd place award.

We finished up in the first location & set out to look for a specific graffiti image that Matt had spotted and wanted to use. It had unfortunately been painted over, however with a equally wonderful piece. 

We then wandered off into side streets on the hunt for more obscure and rough around the edges graffiti & posters. Manchester has some brilliant street artists. Many I wish I knew the names of (if any of the pieces in these photographs you know who they are done by, please do email me).

If you are wanting to book with Matt he can be found working as a stylist at a Manchester Based Salon called C’est La Vie.

As well as working in the Salon and doing competition’s he is a teacher of his craft, at Michael John Training School. “I decided to go into teaching because I wanted to share my experiences with future professionals in the industry and to show young people that there is so much more to hairdressing than just a dead-end job. Its an exciting world full of creativity where you can really love what you do and not have to work a single day in your life.”

Photographer - Yvonne Shearer 

Hairdresser - Matthew Berry 

Makeup Artist - Kaye Burt

Assistant - Reece McEvoy

Model - Sandra Gil