• I Dont Hair
  • I Dont Hair
  • I Dont Hair

PEOPLE: Not Another Salon’s Ross Cosgrove uses Instagram to create a visual diary of the tiny and often beautiful details that occur during a haircut

Images: Ross Cosgrove
Interview: Emma de Clercq

@I_don’t_hair is the popular hair instagram by Ross Cosgrove, Head of Cutting at Not Another Salon. Something of a mecca for technicolour hair, the salon boasts a large and dedicated following who flock to the East London haunt for a hit of vibrant colour. This inspired Cosgrove to set up his instagram account on which he documents little details of every haircut he has carried out over the course of the year. “Working at a salon with such a huge following that features such incredible colour work, and where the majority of followers are there for colour, means it can be quite challenging to make my haircuts stand out with vigour,” he explains, “but I feel I’ve been able to communicate my own original style quite clearly through @i_dont_hair”.

You generally focus in on the very small details of your colour and cutting work – why? Mainly, I wanted to challenge visual ideals. In the beginning I made the images pretty weird. I didn’t want the photos to look like hair. I heavily edited some of them, but I’ve now realised I can get the same effect with minimal editing, maybe just pumping up the highlights. There’s one shot on the feed that isn’t hair at all, but a material I found on a day off, I just made it look like hair. I like that people maybe don’t know what they were looking at.

“I often focus on the small details and the process of the cut as I found I could show a different side to hairdressing that’s not always exposed on Instagram”

Ross Cosgrove

As the year has progressed, and the response has grown, I’ve found it fascinating seeing what people love versus what I love; often my favourite shots are not the ones with the most likes. I work hard to find those moments with a client that contain hidden beauty, beauty that often gets lost in achieving the finished result. I often focus on the small details and the process of the cut as I found I could show a different side to hairdressing that’s not always exposed on Instagram. It’s not quite enough for me to take a picture of a client against a wall. Seeing the craft and the technique interests me much more. Instagram loves strong, bright colours, but a simple, beautiful shape can be much more powerful and, in the end, it all comes down to craft; something that the client themselves may not see as it’s often out of view.

Do you think you’ll carry on the account once you’ve completed the year? The year is almost up, but I’ll carry on posting. The response I’ve had from people around the world has been great and I never started this account thinking that people would be so responsive. I’ve had a lot of encouraging messages from hairstylists saying that @i_dont_hair has inspired them and I’ve had new clients saying how much they love the account and that they can’t wait to see their photo on there. And I’ll keep going, perhaps most of all, because I have quite a backlog of work still to post!

  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR
  • ANTHROPOLOGY OF HAIR