Sicilian Avenue is a pretty Italian-style arcade in central London's Bloomsbury, just north of Holborn, with a few cafes, bars, patisseries and the award-winning Brooks & Brooks hair salon (three times London's Best Hairdresser of the Year), where I had my most daring haircut in years. It might not be daring to anyone else - five or six inches chopped off into a long bob - but it was the shortest I'd been since a regretful decision in the salon aged about 14 (the kind which makes you shudder looking back on family photos) after spending my childhood with long locks I could sit on. What was I thinking.
But short can be a good thing! After a surprisingly good British summer and a couple of nice and hot holidays (plus a few months since my last trim) my hair wasn't in great condition, so I decided it was time to go for the chop. The stylist was a fabulous Aussie dude with silver-grey hair called Clayton who understood after only a couple of sentences what I wanted and delivered exactly that.
I went for a slightly darker than natural near-black brown shade and the bluntest of blunt cuts, for which he tied my hair into a low ponytail, grabbed his scissors and hacked it off in one fell swoop, before neatly levelling it out into a sharp straight line after washing and conditioning with a Kérastase treatment. I left with glossy, healthy hair which felt as light as feather. It was all refreshingly straightforward and the newly-renovated salon is lovely; check it out.
I went for a slightly darker than natural near-black brown shade and the bluntest of blunt cuts, for which he tied my hair into a low ponytail, grabbed his scissors and hacked it off in one fell swoop, before neatly levelling it out into a sharp straight line after washing and conditioning with a Kérastase treatment. I left with glossy, healthy hair which felt as light as feather. It was all refreshingly straightforward and the newly-renovated salon is lovely; check it out.
13-17 Sicilian Avenue London WC1A 2QH
