Students give 'putting your heads together' a whole new meaning!

Mario Failla inspires his students!

Most Saks' staff will by now have been to one of our Trends Launches for the Spring / Summer collection, and I have been fortunate to be launching this collection all over Italy as well, with some fantastic results.

I recently took one of the training sessions at the London Academies in Covent Garden, where all hands were on deck to motivate and inspire stylists from across our network of salons.

In case you are not familiar with the concept of the Spring / Summer Trends, it's designed to be creative and to help individuals think outside the box. It's not just a great course for stylist's from salons, but also an exciting fresh approach for us educators to stretch ourselves and have fun at the same time.

I began my week with a fantastic group, most of whom I had taught previously at our Academies. It was great to see so many familiar faces (plus some new ones of course) and I instantly felt the energy and excitement in the room. The students can either work together, or individually to create their looks, so I asked them to put their heads together and start to think about what inspires them... lets just say they took the term very literally!

It was an amazing week, full of enthusiasm. The work produced was inspiring, and the feedback fantastic!

Do Something Funny for Money!

Mario Failla gets involved with Comic Relief!

Comic Relief / Red Nose Day is the biggest, most successful charity event. So when the BBC asked if anyone from the Saks Academies was free to come up to White City Studios and "do something funny for money," I jumped at the chance!

NVQ educator Clare Murphy and I teamed up and took along some of the Fast Track Beginners students to lend a hand. This would be a great experience for them and help raise some money at the same time.

We were picked up from the London Academies in Covent Garden and driven to the studios. We arrived at the stage door and signed ourselves in. Clare and I were already on the look out for celebs, we always seem to spot them when we are out and about in London so it's competition time to see who can spot the most!

Having agreed to split up (so as to cover more ground) and swap places after lunch, I left Clare and some of the students at the stage door while I headed over to the Cbeebies building to set up with the rest of the team.

We were flooded with people walking past and I grabbed anyone willing to have their hair sprayed bright red! We started createing outrageous hair to make our mark and let everyone know we were there and what we were doing.

Our money bucket filled up quickly and we were running out of red hair pieces, wigs and sprays even quicker! Anyone who was brave enough to sit in the chair was not surprised when they saw what we had done.... it was Friday 13th after all, so a weird hair day was definatley on the cards!

Lunch was a quick 10 minutes, to eat, drink and tally up how many celebs we had spotted. Clare was in the lead 5-4 but I had a feeling things were about to change. We all swapped over and there was no time to sit about and chat as word had really spread and we were filling every chair we had. We were only there till 4pm so we all worked flat out to see as many people as possible and raise as much cash as we could.

Time was running out along with all our props, so Clare and I tally up our final celebrity score and I had taken the lead by 1 point! However, Tom Jones, Davina McCall and David Tennant must be worth more than 1 point each!

We raised £520 for comic relief and I have to say it was an amazing feeling knowing that myself, Clare and all the students involved contributed towards the mammoth total raised this year!

Surprise Reunion at College Seminar

Mario Failla Explains All

I recently visited Suffolk College to do some CPD Training for their educators. The training was based around our new Spring Summer trends, I had a fantastic time and got some great feedback from the attendees. The day was particularly interesting as, unknown to me, one of my old college tutors was actually attending the course!

It was a funny feeling to be teaching someone who taught me many years ago, but it was great to think that I was now repaying him by teaching him some new techniques and trends. It was a surprise reunion, but really great to catch up!