fashionUK

Get this straight. Alternative Fashion Week is not about champagne, celebs and supermodels. It's about a core of creative talent, expressing their design ideas unrestricted by commercial concerns. Because of this, the atmosphere is pretty laid back and chill. The models, hair and make-up artists and the designers all mingle together in a makeshift tent behind the stage. A trestle table holds sandwiches and a huge tea urn, and between the rails models sit and wait patiently for their turn.

Asha, a hair and make-up artist prepared the six female models for the Surge collection. "We thought we'd use hair pieces to add some fun and drama" she explains. "We sprayed the pieces blue to go with the make up and the dresses. Because it's clubwear I wanted to make the hair spunky and in yer face." Asha created a series of all-over bunches, sprayed white hairpieces a vibrant shade of blue and then added them to the back of the head. The final look is Oriental disco chic. While Asha thinks Alternative Fashion Week compares favourably with London Fashion Week and doesn't mind the fact that the hairdressers have to perform their hair miracles in a few feet of space, she wishes "they'd sort out the light! The light in here is really bad so its difficult to see exactly what you're doing."

Hair stylist Christophe Dendaletche (from Jordan Burr Salon in London) took up the challenge to create the hair look for the Oxfam models. He paused for a few minutes to talk to us whilst inserting rollers into the hair of BBC's '2.4 Children' actress Clare Buckfield. "It's a kind of 70s style I'm going for. It's old fashioned but a revival style. The 60s and 70s styles are all about volume - you need to create a lot of volume on the crown of the head and then around the face and the hairline it's really flat and smooth." Before taking on the job, Christophe met with the designers for a hair brief. "The hair depends on the theme of the clothes," he explains. "You have to look at what the clothes are about and then try to match the hair style to that. It's so important to understand the design because what you are doing is creating one overall image."