The legendary hair colourist Jo Hansford MBE is by her own reckoning an accidental success. “I never wanted my own business in the first place,” she tells me when I ask what her grand plan was on opening the very first branch of Jo Hansford in Mayfair back in 1993. “I wouldn’t have ever thought about it had I not been a specialist because, quite frankly, it was all Nicky Clarke and John Frieda and Charles Worthington at that point, all of whom wined and dined the press.” I ask what made her take the leap and she’s characteristically unequivocal. “Well, I was a colour specialist, so I felt there was a niche in the market.”
Like so many stories of success, the are several contributing threads to Hansford’s, not least of which is her sheer determination once she got going. “I think everything is about leading by example. If I can do it, they can do it. I was always the first in the door in the morning and the last person to leave because I couldn’t go unless I knew everything was 100% — it’s about an attitude, about detail.”
