Behind the scenes at Pierre Garroudi

Michael Barnes is renowned for his show stopping creations and avant-garde creativity. He was invited to style the hair at a Pierre Garroudi show, and he certainly didn't disappoint! Here he let's us in on some behind-the-scenes info...

I LOVE doing shows and I don’t get time to do enough of them, sadly, so I was very excited when Pierre Garroudi got in touch and I actually had time to do it. His designs are amazing. He wanted me to style two models, and I could do anything I wanted, as long as it was avant-garde and red. I spent ten days making hairpieces, which were formed from polyeurethane foam covered in acrylic hair. I made them in my garden, much to the bemusement of my neighbours who watched me sanding heads and festooning everything with red acrylic hair! As usual at a show there wasn’t much room to get ready backstage, which was a slight problem when each hairpiece was close to three feet tall! It looked really good on the catwalk. Zandra Rhodes was sitting in the front row and she gasped when the model walked on. You could feel a frisson in the audience when the models walked out, which I was really pleased with. The only drawback was sticking a pin in my finger by mistake and then not being able to tell what was blood and what was red spray - in fact I could do without seeing red for a bit now....