December 9, 2024 |
A fried egg, a squirrel’s arsehole or a closely cropped bowling green? Artist Julie Verhoeven, 55, doesn’t view her hair the same way most women do. “We’re born with our faces but if you are fortunate enough to have hair, you’ve got this tool to work with,” she coos in her distinctive, dove-like voice. And work with it she does, viewing her locks as a canvas and an extension of her artistic practice. Every few months, she debuts a new do, one so wildly unconventional and impossible to ignore that it has also become an act of defiant affirmation. Her hair challenges all norms, of beauty, femininity and age. It dares you to engage.
Julie Verhoeven sporting the ‘Cheer Up, It Might Never Happen’ do, inspired by Wimbledon’s tennis balls and bird feathers. Cut by John Vial, colour by Tracy Hayes, both long-time collaborators of Verhoeven
“Hair is a giant thing for me. When I boil it down, all I like to draw is heads – portraits and hairdos. That’s pretty much what I’m about,” she says. “I love it because it’s quite divisive, isn’t it? I like the pubic hair thing and how that comes in and out of fashion, and I like hairy armpits and hairy legs and how people take such offense to it. I like the three dimensions of our heads – it’s sculptural.”
Her personal hair odyssey was propelled by disappointment with her own looks. “I really hate my face,” she says plainly, “so I’ve got nothing to lose. The only thing I can really enjoy is my hair.” That face, she says is “a constant disappointment. My face is so masculine. Thank God for make-up, but obviously that has become sillier as time has gone on.”
For Verhoeven, who’s originally from Kent, this brutal self-critique is not a conclusion, but a starting point. It’s what has supercharged her artistic practice. “It’s driven me to draw something pretty, something that makes me more appealing. I make friends that way.”
Verhoeven’s hair took a more extreme turn around 15 years ago. She had experimented with dying it, but for the most part kept it long, “because I wanted a boyfriend”. By the time she’d reached her late thirties, she was ready for something more radical. “I wanted to have a good haircut.” She became obsessed with Vidal Sassoon’s famed five-point cut. There was only one man who could reproduce the precision of that style: John Vial, a Sassoon alumni and the only person the legendary Vidal trusted to cut his own hair. She’d met him at Saint Martins, where Verhoeven was lecturing. Vial, who was best friends with the infamous Fashion MA course director Louise Wilson, was always in and out of the building and did the hair for the annual graduation show. “We started off semi-sensible,” says Verhoeven of that first statement cut, but it quickly evolved into something more. Vial brought colour expert Tracy Hayes onboard and soon all three were mood boarding ever more challenging ideas. “We egg each other on,” she says.
The ‘Miss ‘O’ Nee’ do, with Missoni-esque ombre stripes
Verhoeven is not a normal client, says Vial, and there’s a sense of freedom that’s inspiring and liberating for all concerned. “Julie is this incredible blank canvas. She’s game for anything and that’s really unusual, to be able to do something that extreme. I have an incredible body of work and I would not have it with somebody else.” Hayes agrees. Both she and Vial have used the experimental ideas forged with Julie for their work on shoots, campaigns and fashion shows.
On ‘do’ day they usually convene at Vial’s South London house and make a day of it.
The process is arduous, taking a minimum of five hours, often more. The colour is done before the cut, which puts Hayes’s technical virtuosity to the fore. First, the whole head is bleached (“That’s a big job”) then Hayes colours each of the sections, being careful not to let the colour bleed into itself. “Anyone who knows hair knows how difficult that is,” she says. Finally, Vial starts to cut. “Watching John at work with those scissors. The speed! It’s so skilled. There is no hesitation. He just goes straight in,” says Verhoeven.
All three bring visual references: lots of parrot and feathery stuff, as well as underwater things, references to Zaha Hadid’s buildings and society pictures. Hayes must also bring her entire colour spectrum. “One time I left out a shade but then we decided we needed it,” she rues. “We never really know where it’s going to go,” says Vial, with ideas evolving on the day. “I like mushing up these pop cultural references within a hairdo,” says Verhoeven, who can mix Home Counties blow dries, tropical fish, birds of paradise and punk all into one do. One recent do featured an eyeball complete with frond-like lashes shaved into the top of her head. Another was inspired by the Duchess of York in her ’80s headband era. “We did a little graduated bob at the front with a fringe, because Sarah Ferguson used to have one. A band of black hair forms a tufty headband but the back is completely shaved,” says Vial. Verhoeven enjoys the perception shift of looking like a minor royal from the front and a punk princess from the back. “We tagged Sarah Ferguson but she didn’t reply – obviously,” says Vial with a wink.
A manicured bowling green meets Lady Di layers for ‘Ladies of the Bowling Green’
The process isn’t just challenging for Verhoeven. All three collaborators have their buttons pushed. One time she asked for deliberately bad highlights, which made Hayes – a perfectionist when it comes to colour – extremely uncomfortable. Verhoeven doesn’t shy away from triggering emotions. Her more recent cuts have been inspired by high foreheads from Elizabethan times. “Suddenly I’m like, wow, that’s what you look like. It confronts me. It makes me deal with the reality of my face now. There’s no hiding.”
She relishes the clippers coming out. “It feels like starting again.” One of her recent favourites was the fried egg (shaved on the crown and dyed yellow) “because it was so tactile”. Did people want to touch it? “No, sadly. That was very disappointing,” she says with a sigh. She’s experimented with calmer colours but says “it makes it a bit sad”. That said, she swims every day, “so the colour does fade, but I kind of like that because there’s a moment when they are on full throttle and then they become more subdued.”
Once a ‘do’ is finished, Vial says all three feel euphoric. “We look at each other and can’t believe we’ve been so silly. It just feels really naughty,” says Verhoeven. Then it’s time to unleash the look on the world. Other people’s reactions are an important part of the process for Verhoeven. “I’ve got a very patient partner, thank god,” she says of her train driver husband, Leon, who is usually the first to see her. “He’s always trying to be positive about it even though it’s really extreme,” says Vial. The three collaborators have a running joke – what’s Leon going to say when she walks in the door? “I have to report back to Tracy and John. He’s always in shock,” she says, recalling the unveiling of a look dubbed by Vial and Hayes ‘Ladies of the Bowling Green’. Her crown was shaved close and dyed a vivid, lawn-green but surrounded by lavish layers of blonde Lady Di flicks. When she walked in with that, he said, “For fuck’s sake!”
Over 15 years of radical dos including The Fried Egg, Sarah Ferguson, and The Eyeball. Photography courtesy of Julie Verhoeven
“It’s not a tattoo, but she’s the one going down Sainsbury’s to get a pint of milk with that hairdo,” says Vial. Online, people don’t hold back. “It looks like a squirrel’s arsehole,” said one troll of a recent look, which had been inspired by the graduated colour inclusion of a cut gemstone.
“We laugh about it, but I’m not doing myself any favours,” says Verhoeven, “I just care less now what it looks like.” She’s happy to follow a creative idea to its end point, however wild, “Because of the age I’m at [55], I’m used to being ignored even with the crazy hair,” she says, “What have you got to do? It’s just quite funny. I used to get quite a lot of people taking notes and taking photos when I was younger, but now they’re like, crazy old woman and they don’t really bother.” She knows that her hair throws down a visual gauntlet. “I love it. It’s a way of engaging or not engaging with people, and it’s really fascinating. People get angry, which is absolutely ridiculous that you can rile somebody to that extent.”
Verhoeven also uses other people’s reactions to her hair as a social filter. “Because, you know, you haven’t got that much time for everybody in life.” If she sees a “wry smile” then she knows she’s okay.
Children have the most open and honest reaction to her “That’ s fun and to be expected, when you are a child, you just call out for what it is.” Teenage boys she says “are the most threatened by me. Occasionally they’ll comment but the thing that annoys her most is when they take pictures without asking. “I hate bad manners,” she says.
As for her next ‘do’ she’s already gathering her visual thoughts. “I’ve looked at every book on monks and there’s some very crazy ones. Quite radical,” she says. Quite.
Photography by Panos Damaskinidis. Taken from 10+ Issue 7 – DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – out NOW. Order your copy here.
