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Cause for celebration as a member of Brighton hairdressing team is nominated for national award

The Trevor Sorbie salon in Brighton is celebrating as one of its top stylists has been recognised by the prestigious British Hairdressing Awards for her outstanding work.

Photography by kerbe.co.uk

Creative Stylist Anna Chapman has been nominated as ‘Newcomer of the Year’ in the 2007 Awards. The team from Trevor Sorbie Brighton will be at the gala awards ceremony at the Grosvenor House Hotel to cheer Anna on as the winners are announced. Salon Director Kate Wilson said: “Both Trevor and I believe Anna has a very high chance of winning the award. Her work is original and creative, but most importantly the styles she has created are stunningly beautiful.”

The British Hairdressing Awards are the most prestigious awards in the industry.

Hairdressers from across the UK vie for awards in categories such as ‘Newcomer of the Year’ and ‘Hairdresser of the Year’. Alison Jameson of The British Hairdressing Awards said:
“Newcomer of the Year is one of the largest categories with entries coming from all over the UK. To be nominated as one of only five national finalists in this category was an amazing achievement for Anna.”

Photography by kerbe.co.uk

Trevor Sorbie is no stranger to the Awards having won more than its fair share of Awards in the past. Trevor himself won the ‘Hairdresser of the Year’ Award an unrivalled four times, while the company has won the ‘Artistic Team’ Award for the past two years. In 2007 the Trevor Sorbie team are finalists in four categories: Angelo Seminara who works out of the Covent Garden salon, but oversees training for Brighton, has been nominated as both ‘British Hairdresser of the Year’ and ‘London Hairdresser of the Year’. With nominations in both the ‘Artistic Team’ and ‘Best Newcomer’ categories, 2007 looks like being a bumper awards year for the Trevor Sorbie team.

Trevor Sorbie Brighton is proud that an original member of the Brighton team has received a nomination. “It’s fantastic that after only four years in business, a home-grown member of our team has received a nomination” said Salon Director Kate Wilson. “Anna trained with us when we first opened and has since become one of the salon’s most popular stylists. With this nomination, people in Brighton will now be able to have their hair styled locally by a nationally recognised talent.”

Photography by kerbe.co.uk

And what does the girl herself think? “I’d always wanted to enter the Awards” said Anna. “It’s the biggest competition in hairdressing… you can’t get any better.” To secure her nomination Anna produced a ‘collection’ featuring her unique and beautiful hair designs. “I thought about every detail – from the hair styles, the models, lighting, design. I tried to create pictures which were simple and beautiful, which focused the attention on the hair.” When asked how her ‘collection’ differed from the work she did in the salon she said:
“My main focus in the salon is to really listen to what the clients want, then create styles which are going to be beautiful.”

If you would like to arrange an appointment with Anna please call the Brighton salon on 01273 220007

Brighton Craft Fair 2007 The finest showcase for affordable craft in the South East

After last year’s inaugural event proved such a success, Brighton Craft Fair is back, and once again looks set to attract the capacity crowds and rave reviews for which it is becoming known. Set in the opulent surroundings of Brighton’s Corn Exchange, Brighton Craft Fair is an exciting showcase for the very best in affordable craft, design and applied art, and the highest quality event of its type in the South East.

Zoon vessels by Desiree Hope

From intricate stained glass windows to vibrant knitted textiles, this is a unique opportunity for new and experienced art buyers to meet and purchase work direct from the maker in a friendly and relaxed atmosphere. Pieces are priced between £20 and £1,500, and a full-service café is provided by Food Solutions Partnership, offering the perfect space where visitors can relax while they think over any purchases.

Ornamental silver dish by Rebecca Johnson

At this year’s event, around 100 makers will be exhibiting pieces from a variety of disciplines. These exhibitors have been carefully selected to ensure an exciting and diverse show featuring the best of contemporary craft and design, including:

• Victoria Kershaw: Functional tableware using silver and concrete, inlaid with delicate lace patterns
• Akiko Kingsbury: Vibrant and striking knitted accessories influenced by a range of styles and colours
• The Earring Café: Funky glass beads designed and made by a company of one, to be wearable and fun
• Corrina Rothwell: Monochrome machine-embroidered cartoons with dark humour and an ironic twist
• Hendel-Blackford Fine Furniture: Contemporary furniture and gifts made with a desire to create something extraordinary
• Kirsten Kinvara Wass: Modern, edgy jewellery re-presenting fine detailed Victorian pressed glass buttons

Bella shopper by Catherine Aitken

Organiser Jon Tutton said: “We have selected the best makers in the UK, across all disciplines. These makers are breathing new life into craft and design, taking both traditional and contemporary skills and processes, and letting their imaginations take the work far, far away from the usual. “What you will find at Brighton Craft Fair is well made, well designed, contemporary work, sometimes with a sense of fun but always with originality. You will be buying hand-made and original work direct from the maker.”

Tickets are available on the door at £5 per person (children under 14 go free). Entrance includes a detailed catalogue accompanying the show, with a comprehensive list of all exhibitors.

For more information visit www.brightoncraftfair.co.uk

Corn Exchange, Church Street, Brighton

Opening times:
Friday 23 November, 10am–7.30pm
Saturday 24 November 10am–6pm
Sunday 25 November 10am–5pm

Katie considers whether youthful excess may lead to middle-aged boredom

Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always had a soft spot for rock stars who have mastered the fine art of growing old disgracefully.

Take Keith Richards for instance. He hasn’t had a coherent thought since 1974, has a habit of falling out of trees and probably believes he really is a pirate – but that doesn’t stop young pretenders like Russell Brand desperately trying to rip off the old goat’s trademark style.

Keef’s old mucker Marianne Faithful also has this ageing thing sussed. Through sheer chutzpah she’s strung out a career as a celebrity smackhead and Mars bar diddler well into her dotage. Now she’s shacked up with a lover half her age, shrugged off hepatitis C and plans to spend her final years playing court to bright young things begging to follow in her footsteps.

“He twitters on about how rural living is the new rock ‘n’ roll”

In the light of these shining examples it’s nothing short of tragic that the Britpop stars of yesteryear are having such difficulty adjusting to the ageing process. Just witness the ongoing deterioration of Alex James from Blur. Once the coolest man on God’s earth and a self-styled prince of Soho sneeze ‘n’ squeeze – these days he languishes as a celebrity cheese manufacturer with three kids called (God help them) Geronimo, Artemis and Galileo.

Maybe it’s just me (or latent lactose intolerance) but his obsession with dairy products is starting to become unnerving. You can’t open a magazine or switch on the TV without finding Alex twittering on about how cheese festivals are the new Glastonbury and rural living is the new rock ‘n’ roll. It’s all deathly boring and slightly smug.

However ironically he embraces the ‘big house in the country’ lifestyle that his band used to satirise there’s a growing feeling that he’s starting to royally lose the plot.

What’s really disconcerting is that whatever satanic pact he made during the Britpop days has now obviously been left to lapse. While Alex may describe himself as ‘the second drunkest member of Blur’ he was always by far the best looking. When Blur were young Alex had cheekbones that could lacerate girls’ hearts at a hundred paces and a floppy fringe that always seemed to point invitingly towards his crotch.

What I’m beginning to suspect is that during Blur’s heyday there was a portrait of Alex hanging in the attic, à la Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, that soaked up all the hard living while his body remained youthful. Unfortunately thanks to middle age and excessive cheese munching it’s the increasingly haggard picture that now stalks the country roads shooting pheasants and milking cows while his gorgeous alter ego is caught in that lonely loft, dreaming of nights at the Groucho and the possibility of a snog off Justine from Elastica.

Still, perhaps Alex’s fate should be a lesson to us all. To paraphrase William Blake, if the road of excess leads to a life of middle-aged cheese farming rather than the palace of wisdom, I might just choose to swap my triple vodkas for mineral water from here on out.

Explore life on the silver screen at the Cinecity festival, including Julian Schnabel’s new film

Cinecity is back for its 5th edition from 15 November. The region’s leading film festival presents a packed programme of premieres, previews and special events.

Cinecity gives you the chance to see dozens of big screen previews of awardwinning films. Opening with Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution, his first film since Brokeback Mountain, other highlights include The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (see below for interview with director Julian Schnabel) and Cannes Palme d’or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days.

There are programme strands dedicated to artists’ cinema, dance for camera, new work made in Brighton and a retrospective of British director Val Guest.

For full programme details and exclusive Cinecity podcasts visit www.cine-city.co.uk

Julian Schnabel interviewed by Stephen Dalton

The bad-boy New York artist turned international movie maker is in a flamboyant mood when we meet to discuss his third feature film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Bearlike and brawny, the 56-year-old director seems happy to live up to his Hemingway-esque reputation for larger-than-life showmanship.

But there is nothing boorish about Schnabel’s most mature, accomplished and moving film to date. Completing a loose trilogy about doomed artists that began with Basquiat and Before Night Falls, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly is based on the memoir by Parisian socialite Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was paralysed in 1995 by a stroke that left him trapped inside his frozen body with “locked-in syndrome”.

Incredibly, he dictated this bittersweet account of his nightmarish condition using just a single eyelid. “What Jean-Do did was amazing,” says Schnabel. “Usually people don’t speak to you from the grave. But this guy was sort of dead and alive at the same time, so he got to speak to us from this unique vantage point. I think the border between life and death became a little fuzzy for him.”

“I’d like to make a movie where audiences can feel they have seen something they don’t usually see”

A still from The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

All of this may sound dauntingly grim subject matter for a biopic. And yet The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is a lush and uplifting celebration of life, love and creativity which won Schnabel the Best Director prize at Cannes. In a role originally earmarked for Johnny Depp, the French actor Mathieu Amalric is terrific as Bauby, despite barely moving a muscle.

Schnabel calls it a “Buddhist film”, punctuating it with dreamlike visual flourishes and quasi-mystical nature imagery. It is very painterly but, the director insists, made with a very different discipline than his paintings. “I guess part of my brain likes to tell stories”.

Schnabel nods. “I feel like I need to explain things sometimes, and in paintings I don’t. I think people who like paintings don’t need answers. But the way film has constructed itself in this century, there’s usually a beginning and a middle and an end.”

Shot by regular Spielberg cinematographer Janusz Kaminski, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is visually sumptuous and stylistically bold. Much of it is filmed from Bauby’s firstperson viewpoint, blurry and hallucinatory. It makes for a bold and beautiful film.

“I think there’s more freedom in this movie than in Basquiat,” says Schnabel. “I wasn’t trying to show: ‘hey, I’m a painter, I can make a blurry film.’ I just think: here’s a guy who can’t see too good, so the audience will accept the fact that it’s blurry for a while. I’m sick of looking at the same thing all the time, I’d like to make a movie where audiences can feel they have seen something they don’t usually see. That’s why I was attracted to this material.”

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly screens as part of Cinecity at the Duke of York’s Picturehouse on Saturday 17 November at 6.30pm