Few people can out-talk me when it comes to Afro hair. In a chic hairdresser's just off Carnaby Street early one Saturday morning, I soon realise that Johnnie Sapong is one of them. Most hairdressers are in love with themselves; Sapong, who opened his eponymous salon at the end of last year, is in love with his job. He has been cutting hair for 20 years, yet still brandishes his scissors with all the joy of a child with a new toy. You can't help but be swept along with it all.
Insider advice and tricks picked up from his years as a session styler (he's done everyone from Jude Law to Naomi Campbell) come tumbling from Sapong's mouth. "Put a sock over the hairdryer to diffuse the heat," he tells me when I complain that the hairdryers at my gym don't have a diffuser. "Mix a little conditioner with water in a spritzer bottle, and you've got a great leave-in conditioner that's not as heavy as the shop-bought ones," he says when I ask how I can give my hair an instant lift.
"Black women have a lack of confidence about going to the hairdresser," says Sapong, who puts this down to years of having to make do with bad products, poorly trained hairdressers and a world where they are told that straight hair is good hair. But, as Sapong says, "Good hair is about confidence. It's also about information."
And for good hair in summer? Treatments and trims are the key, he says, as is avoiding product build-up, which will leave your hair looking flat and dull. And, in style terms, anything obviously false (be it a full head of blond or blue streaks) is out and anything natural is in.
"There is a lot of interest in natural hair," he says. "It's a reaction to the straight, super-flat look. Things are more bespoke at the moment - most colours are led by what you're doing from a cut point of view. As we move into summer, there's a livening-up, an accentuating of chocolate browns, making the hair a little lighter, to break up the texture, but still with a natural essence. Not a block of colour, just the tips looking sun-kissed. It's colour, but with natural principles."
