Hairdresser makes the cut

COLIN SMITH

CUTTING A DASH: Top junior styling apprentice Gemma Kallec knows what she wants.

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Gemma Kellec has come a long way from the kid who chopped bald patches into her father's hair using paper-cutting scissors.

The bubbly 20-year-old from Westport is approaching the end of her "wicked" three-year Certificate in Professional Hairdressing qualification from the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology, but the young graduate already has numerous hairdressing awards to her name.

Sitting on a couch beside a stack of trophies on a quiet afternoon, Miss Kellec told The Nelson Mail how she ended up at the Trafalgar St studio Ursula Harris Hair Design.

She says she spent a week "working her butt off" on work experience there because she was so keen to get a job at the studio. She then began helping out on Fridays and eventually landed an apprenticeship with the owner of the business, Ursula Harris.

Miss Kellec's first roles were sweeping, answering the phone and hanging coats but "slowly you get more and more on to the floor". Soon she was doing nearly everything, she says. "You don't even recognise it's happening."

Her final test is in March and involves six hours on the floor doing various tasks including a cut-and-colour and a hair up style. Her training has not been without its share of collateral damage, however. She ambitiously told her sister early on in the course that she could cut layers. "She ended up having one really short layer and one really long one. She was just so appalled."

Disasters aside, Miss Kellec went to a Christchurch competition in July this year armed with scissors and models and came back with three trophies.

She says she was really nervous. "You get into a room and it's all hairdressers and models lining long tables and double-sided mirrors. You have got 45 minutes on the floor."

Miss Kellec was also the New Zealand Association of Registered Hairdressers overall junior regional champion last year. From there she went to the nationals in Auckland to represent Nelson and became New Zealand's top junior styling apprentice.

She describes herself as driven. She knows what she wants and says she has the right people behind her in order to achieve her goals. She is looking forward to getting her qualification ticked off and doing more competitions next year. Ultimately she would like to join the Redken New Zealand creative team.

Her favourite experience so far, however, was not on the floor of a salon but on stage at Nelson College. "I shaved the boys' heads for stage challenge. I felt like I was shearing sheep."

So what's the key to a good haircut? Consultation, she says, and listening to clients. She's also good at doing the talking. In the course of this interview I found myself reclined in a chair at the hair-wash basin, soothed by one of her renowned head massages, while she asked me the questions. Being able to communicate well with clients is key to a successful career, she says, and having nice hair is also part of the job. "Otherwise it would be like being a builder with a horrible house."

- © Fairfax NZ News