Scottish salon heroes: charlie miller

Published 25th Jul 2014 by rachael
Scottish salon heroes: charlie miller Scottish Salon Heroes: Charlie Miller Charlie Miller doesn't just have an award-winning salon group, talented artistic team and OBE - he's also rubbed shoulders the Dalai Lama, who cuts his hair with clippers given to him by Miller. His career began at 15 and Charlie told HJ, "although I enjoyed what I was doing, I felt restrained and needed the control to enable me to develop my own quality and artistic vision. I decided to go it alone at 20." The year was 1965 and Charlie reveals that the first location 'chose me'. He says: "On wondering how to accomplish my own salon with no money, I had the chance of taking a shop in a housing scheme in Edinburgh. It's legendary in the city and was called His Hair." Eventually the business expanded, although Charlie reveals that he wanted it to happen organically. "We only opened new salons when we had the right people to look after the individual sites," he says. "It takes longer, but is the only way forward for us. We're not driven by how many salons we have, but by ensuring that we deliver a salon that is unmistakenably a Charlie Miller salon with quality hairdressing, services and atmosphere." Today there are five salons spread throughout Edinburgh with an internationally-renowned artistic team headed up by Charlie’s eldest son, Jason, and daughter-in-law, India. Ensuring it truly is a family affair, with second son Joshua acting as joint managing director with Jason overseeiong all operational and administrative procedures and finance. "They’ve followed in my footsteps but made footsteps of their own," Charlie once said. [hji-gallery-legacy] After hanging up his full time scissors in 1998, Charlie continued to focus on the company’s marketing, PR and business development and since 2007 has become committed to personally cutting and styling wigs for Teenage Cancer Trust, helping to deliver Hair 4 U – a service dedicated to providing real hair wigs to teenage cancer patients. In 2012, he became the first Scottish hairdresser to receive an OBE. And as for the Dalai Lama? The Scotsman reports that Charlie, who has been interested in Buddhism since childhood, said: "Around ten years ago, we were at the Samye Ling monastery in Eskdalemuir in the Borders and I gave him a set of clippers in a little tartan bag. I gave them to him because I couldn’t offer to cut his hair as it’s an important job carried out by monks. When we were over in India visiting the Dalai Lama recently, I said: ‘Your Holiness, you need your hair cut’, because it was looking a bit stubbly and I told him I’d given him these clippers. "He said: ‘Yes, I’m still using them’. I was astounded - I hoped he still would be but I thought he might have given them to one of the other monks."
rachael

rachael

Published 25th Jul 2014

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