Celebrating 20 years of L’Oréal Professionnel and Central Saint Martins

2020 marks two decades of collaboration between our Fashion programme and L’Oréal Professionnel. L’Oréal Professionnel supports our students through both scholarships and prizes. Every year, their stylists bring both skills and experience to our BA and MA Fashion catwalks, helping our students create their final looks.

From its inception, the partnership has demonstrated how integral hair styling is to fashion as well as emphasising the collaboration behind the catwalk. A new publication highlights the many designers and creators who have contributed to this partnership. 20: L’Oréal Professionnel and Central Saint Martins brings together archive imagery and reflections on past prize winners – including Kim Jones, Grace Wales Bonner, Christopher Kane, Mary Katrantzou, Molly Goddard, Craig Green. The book, created in collaboration between Central Saint Martins and L’Oréal Professionnel, connects the past to the present with alumni profiles written by current sudents of BA Fashion Communication and Promotion: Fashion Journalism.

Moving from the alumni to the emerging designers, 20 also celebrates the class of 2020 across the Fashion programme. With the BA Fashion catwalk unable to go ahead due to COVID-19 restrictions, this year's collaboration was pushed in new and unexpected ways. Scattered across the world, our students created extraordinary films to present the vision and theme of their garments.  "The creative agility that the students and team showed during these challenging times and the phenomenal work they created while in lockdown was simply incredible," says Monica Teodoro, General Manager, L’Oréal Professionnel UKI, "it was a real moment in fashion history and a real step change for how we work with fashion in the future.”

“The collaboration between fashion and hair packs a punch because we can visibly tease out its potential. In the 20 years that L’Oréal Professionnel has partnered with Central Saint Martins, their hairstylists and students have created some iconic catwalk moments. The true beauty of this partnership lies in its commitment to collaboration. It’s the understanding that fashion and hair are not really two separate industries, but two means to a mutual end: hair heightens fashion and fashion flaunts its hair.”
Dr Geraldine Biddle-Perry

“Since 2001 the partnership that started with a few creative minds has really flourished into this symbiotic relationship, including bursaries, fashion shows and student projects. Fashion and hair trends evolve to reflect the cultural and socio-political context of any given moment. Over the past decade we have become much more diverse, more creative and we are constantly evolving the way we work. We never say how things should go or limit the students’ creativity. It’s important for the individuals in the show to express themselves, and the hair is a complement to their vision. I have a soft spot for the BA, because you can see how free the designs are.”
Monica Teodoro, General Manager, L’Oréal Professionnel UKI

“Fashion is all about the full look; without that, it would be product design. Fashion as a term implies that you are creating a vision or a statement. You are creating a way of being, behaving, moving and looking. Hair is a very important part of the body, whether you have a lot of hair or none at all, because it is part of how we see ourselves. Hair not only enables a designer to complete their look, but it relates to the attitude and identity of the wearer. The MA show has fifteen to twenty different collections, which means there are a lot of completely different personalities at play. It’s not about looking uniform, but the hair becomes a sort of binding element that creates a genre for the whole show that year.”
Fabio Piras, Course Leader, MA Fashion

Download and read 20: L’Oréal Professionnel and Central Saint Martins [PDF: 15.2MB].