This Midlands lass has always done things her own way, especially when it comes to creating B-E-A-utiful cuts and colours. We speak to Lisa Shepherd about throwing away the rulebook… Kara Dolman

f it hadn’t been for a variety of broken bones, including her wrist, ankle, little toe – and not to mention a fractioned nose – things might have turned out very differently for Lisa Shepherd.

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As a little girl she spent her days show-jumping, mucking out stables and dreaming of growing up to be the female equivalent of Jilly Cooper’s Rupert Campbell-Black [a rather sexy show-jumper in Cooper’s series of books].

In fact, it wasn’t until just one broken bone too many that she began to realise a career as a professional horsewoman might not be for her. “I was obsessed,” belts out Lisa in her typical fashion. “It was my life until I was about 14 or 15 but even though I was very brave, and good, I just kept falling off! It didn’t stop me from always getting back on but seriously, what else could I break?!”

Luckily for the hairdressing world – and women everywhere – Lisa’s ‘fancy’ quickly took her down a new path. “To be honest I only ever went to hairdressing college because the guy I

fancied at the time [Nick Ford, who now runs Abacus] was going, so off I went with him. We must have only gone out for fi ve minutes but it didn’t matter because within one hour I absolutely fell in love with hair colour.”

While Lisa struggled with subjects like science and maths at school, on the hairdressing course at Kidderminster College the creativity and chemistry of colouring just clicked into place, and she was instantly fascinated by the transformative power that lay at her fi ngertips. Two years later, and by now a burgeoning colour expert, Lisa’s career was given an almighty kick-start when, fresh from college, she went to work for the legendary Umberto Giannini as a junior colourist.

Lisa recalls: “Umberto was the one who really got me hooked. I loved colour but it was him who really showed me what a career in this industry could mean; the glamour, the awards, the art involved in it all. Watching him, I knew that was the career I wanted for myself.” >>

Lisa was a show-jumper as a teen.

All images courtesy of Lisa Shepherd

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