ON THE first day of October, I decide it’s high time for aesthetic reinvention.
The timing feels appropriately symbolic. Autumn has begun its annual exercise in surrender, shedding whatever can no longer be carried into the next season. Naturally, I respond by getting a full head of highlights and turning it into a meditation on identity.
Studio Studios understands the impulse. Founded by hairstylist Jadah Dale in 2023, the independent, queer-owned Shoreditch salon has cultivated a loyal community alongside a clientele that includes Gabbriette, Lola Young, Romy, Rhian Teasdale, Amy Taylor, Ellie Rowsell, Rose Gray and Arlo Parks.
At its heart is the belief that hair possesses “manifestive properties”. It is a philosophy that treats transformation as something more interesting than a dramatic before-and-after. Sometimes changing your hair is less about becoming someone new than allowing an emerging version of yourself to become visible.
“I think it’s less about creating a new identity and more about revealing one that’s already beginning to emerge,” Dale explains. “Hair can communicate not only who we are today, but also who we aspire to become and the direction we want our lives to take. There’s a saying, ‘Dress for the job you want.’ Perhaps the same philosophy can apply to hair, but in an even wider sense.”
Studio Studios
The studio occupies two connected rooms, though it feels less like a conventional salon than a particularly well-curated living space. Vintage chairs sit among candles, music and references pulled from film, fashion and cult culture. The atmosphere is intimate without feeling exclusive, designed to encourage conversation rather than process clients through a predetermined aesthetic.
My colourist, Tanahya, begins with the individual rather than the transformation. She understands my texture, identifies the existing damage and listens to the practical concerns beneath the desired result. The objective is not simply to make me blonder. It is to find a blonde that feels mine recognisably, preserve the integrity of my hair and make the result sustainable beyond the first immaculate blow-dry.
“We always want to get to the root of what will genuinely make someone happiest with their hair,” Dale says. “A big part of that is learning to read between the lines and ask the right questions, because there’s so much nuance when it comes to hair and how people want to feel in it.”
Studio Studios
Whimsy, after all, still has to negotiate with chemistry. Studio Studios balances creative possibility with an understanding of what hair can withstand. When a requested result is not immediately achievable, the team looks for alternatives within the same aesthetic world, working with the client’s natural texture, lifestyle and long-term hair health rather than sacrificing all three to immediacy.
This patience forms part of the salon’s philosophy. Hair carries a physical record of bleach, colour and previous cuts, but it also stores something less visible: the selves we associate with them.
“We hold on to so many stories about ourselves and our lives through our hair,” Dale says. “Maybe we don’t want a straight-across fringe because that’s what we had in grade five, or we can’t imagine going red again because that’s what we did after our first heartbreak.”
Clients will often bring her a photograph of themselves from a period when they remember being their happiest. “Somehow,” she adds, “it’s almost always a platinum blonde.”
There is something lovely about the fact that hair cannot always transform at the speed of desire. The limitations left by a previous cut or colour may require us to move through several stages before reaching the result we imagined.
Studio Studios
“Not everything can happen immediately,” Dale says. “Sometimes we’re forced to stop and smell the flowers along the way.”
Tanahya’s full head of highlights brings me to a blonde I recognise, but also one with whom I am still becoming acquainted. Nothing essential has been erased. The colour illuminates what was already there, integrating the stability of an older self with the possibility of whatever comes next.
Perhaps that is what gives hair its manifestive quality. It cannot magically create the life we want, but it can give intention a physical form. We alter the reflection first, then begin the slower process of aligning ourselves with it.
Outside, autumn continues stripping everything back. Inside, my hair catches the light differently. Apparently, shedding an old self does not require abandoning her completely.
Sometimes she only needs better highlights.
by Adina Ilie
Book your appointment at studiostudios.uk or visit Studio Studios at 29–30 Swanfield Street, London E2 7LF.