More than 200 hairdressers, hair dressing students and tutors watched as the King of the ‘Up Do’ demonstrated how it’s done to launch K College’s new salons at the Brook Street campus in Tonbridge. The emergence of glamorous hair styles involving rollers, hair spray and plenty of back combing, has been inspired by the work of internationally acclaimed, New Zealand born hair stylist, Patrick Cameron.

He showed how the ‘Lady Gaga’ bow is done, as well as the perfect French pleat to the specially invited audience.


Mandy Elllis of Hair Gallery in Crowborough, said:  ‘He is the icon for hair up and this was inspirational to watch – you can see what he was doing with a flick of his hand – try that yourself and it just doesn’t work.  He is a genius.’

Ruby Taylor, also of Hair Gallery, said:  ‘He makes glamour seem easy.  He really is the king of the up do, and this is what all our young customers want to look like now.’

Students described Patrick Cameron’s work as excellent and inspirational.  He has performed before audiences of thousands – most notably in the Kremlin with Russian President, Vladimir Putin’s wife in the front row.

He told K College:  ‘I am passionate about my career in hairdressing and I am a huge supporter of education and training, so I love to get out to colleges like this to meet the hair stylists who are working in the business now, and those who are training to do so in future.’

He says everyone should remember that hair dressing is key to fashion and fashion goes in circles.  Some of the audience were old enough to remember the Sixties when women used to spend Saturdays out shopping with their hair in curlers ready to be teased into huge beehives to go dancing that evening.

Mr Cameron’s styles for international catwalks and magazines have driven the new craze for the same glamour, as can be seen in city centres across the country now, where the same ‘hair in rollers’ look is back on Saturday afternoons.

He said:  ‘Everyone studying hair at K College needs to learn all the basics because the styles that you might think are out dated will come back one day.  The skill base that I have got, a lot of hairdressers have lost and now there is this demand from young women for this look and they can’t get it at every salon.  The world is not ruled by hair straighteners!’

He urged young hairdressers and those re training after maybe bringing up their children to take as much from their tutors as possible, and then work in a salon before branching out into different roles within the profession, as he did. He said:  ‘At College you can learn all the skills but it is in the salon that you will learn how to talk to people, and that’s the key to a lifetime in hairdressing.  I think you have incredible facilities here in Tonbridge.  I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand, and I have traveled the world with my career.  You live just outside London, you can do ANYTHING!’

Also speaking at the K Salon launch was Marian Green, managing director of Thalgo, the spa and beauty company.  She told guests how she was inspired in her career and advised them to ‘use the new jaw-dropping, incredible, amazing salons to the utmost, and take as much information from tutors’ as they are joining an industry where the average woman in the UK spends £185,528 on beauty in their lifetime.


K College offers members of the public the chance to have their hair done at a fraction of the cost of most salons so that students get the chance to practice with ‘real’ customers, and the new salon is at the front of the new multi  million pound campus to encourage as many people from the town as possible to come in.