The Organic Hairdresser
Pioneering organic hairdressing since 1999, TABITHA JAMES KRAAN is well known within the hair world for her 100% natural and organic hair collection. Also known as, ‘The Organic Hairdresser’ Tabitha has over 30 years experience in the hair industry and so tells her story about how her brand began...
Tell us more about your background in the hair industry? I was born and bred into the hairdressing world – my Mum was a hairdresser and I would often go with her to visit clients. In those days ‘perms’ were the rage, and I could never understand why my Mum wanted to do the job she did. Where we lived, we were surrounded by nature and organic goodness, we had horses, we explored the countryside – my Mum’s job was a complete contrast to our normal life. At this point I decided I wanted to be a chef because of my love for putting ingredients together, however on my first day of cooking school I realised I couldn’t work with the knives they gave me, and was quick to realise that hairdressing was the way forward. 30 years on and I still don’t regret my decision!
Being a salon owner, at what point did you decide to produce your own organic hair range? My salon opened in 1993, very soon after I quickly got married and had a child. It was actually at my first appointment where my midwife told me that because I’m pregnant I couldn’t colour my hair, I had a real light bulb moment. I had never thought that what we put in to our bodies, travels through our blood streams and can be harmful. Our scalp has the most concentrated area of hair follicles – which is one of the worst places you can put chemicals. Immediately after this, I returned back to the salon and completely changed the way we worked, because I identified, if I can’t do this to myself there’s no way I can do this to my clients. At the time there were no brands out there, which were 100% natural and organic – I was quick to learn that raw materials were not high performance – and so with my love of playing and putting ingredients together to create unique formulas, the brand began.
Tabitha James Kraan is based on three main principles, what are these? Most problems with hair comes from the fact that we’ve removed the protective layer of the hair – this is a very fine layer of oil which should be there, but isn’t. The acid mantel on your skin is a very fine layer of oil which is naturally reproduced daily because of the skincare routines we have in place. This natural layer is missing because we don’t look after our scalp as much as we should. So my first principle is oil rebalancing, if you can get that natural oil back on to your hair you will have less damage. It’s all about bringing vitality back to your hair and getting it to the right layer – with the scalp the oil balance is all about getting back to neutral – there are many products in my range which helps balance this back. The second principle is correct cleansing – you need to treat your hair like cashmere, wash it like cashmere and protect like cashmere. Our hair cleanser is designed to clean the oil in your hair, but not remove it, it’s a great product for a client who has oily hair as it rebalances the scalp. We all need to change our attitude when looking after our hair. Hair isn’t a living fabric, as soon as you’re in heat moisture evaporates – leaving hair damaged and dry. The quick fix these days is to protect our hair with a plastic coating which causes more harm than good. This is why I’m so against silicones – we need to moisturise our hair and scalp, as we would do morning and evening to our skin.
What’s on the horizon for your brand? Next step is to launch a completely 100% natural free colour range – I’ve been working with organisations which are growing medicinal ingredients to develop health beneficial scalp and hair products. My hair care routine, is the same as my skin care routine. I look at skin and scalp as the same entity. The one thing I say to people is – what is it that you do that’s different? Would you be willing to wash your face with your shampoo every day for a week? No I thought not! PB
