This month, City College Norwich’s Clare Burgess hears from two lecturers and hair and beauty experts with some advice about online tutorials
With a fresh new season just around the corner, many Norfolk residents will be eager to freshen up their look by experimenting with the latest hair and make-up techniques. This year’s autumn/winter season sees glitter make-up and loose, wavy up-dos making a comeback, alongside some new and more complicated styles which will have the very fashion conscious turning to online video tutorials to help them achieve their desired look.
While experimenting with different styles and learning new techniques can be fun, it can be difficult to tell which tutorials are best to follow as not everyone who makes them is fully qualified to give the safest advice which, in some cases, can lead to disasters that need to be rectified in a professional salon. To help ensure that expert advice is available online, City College Norwich hair and beauty lecturers and owners of Norwich’s B. . . Hair and Beauty salon, Charlene and Leanne Forder, have set up their own fashion and beauty YouTube video blogs - otherwise known as a vlog - that aim to help viewers achieve the latest looks safely at home.
Leanne and Charlene explain the importance of following expert advice and how they use the college’s Solutions Salon to ensure students are ready for the world of work.
Beauty therapist Leanne says: “Due to the nature of our work, the hair and beauty industry has a lot of professional standards that everyone must follow in order to give clients the best possible end results. As online hair and beauty tutorials have become increasingly popular over the years, we have found that not only are our clients much more aware of the current trends but our students are too. This is great for them to stay current and be creative, but we have found that following tutorials from those who haven’t had professional training can sometimes result in students having picked up a few bad habits before they start their courses with us.
Hairdresser Charlene adds: “To ensure that customers to the college’s Solutions Salon receive the best treatments possible, we spend the first six to eight weeks training our first year students on salon standards and the very basics of hair and beauty before they are able to take bookings from clients. In this industry, it can be quite challenging to keep up with the latest trends as they change very quickly and some may only be around for a few months at a time. However, in our experience, we know that as long as we ensure that our students have mastered the very basic skills, they can then build upon these skills to create the latest looks in the safest and most effective way possible when they are out in the industry.”
