"IT'S THE OSCARS of hairdressing," says Karen Whelan, her face breaking into a great smile at the mention of the upcoming gala affair.
Think high octane excitement, clouds of hairspray, big hair statements, thumping music and waves of applause. It's the film Pret-a-Porter come to life.
This black-tie affair, to be held in Dublin later this month, sees hairdressers from all over Ireland competing for the L'Oreal Colour Trophy. "It's a very glitzy affair. There's such excitement on the night," she says.
Karen Whelan, a senior technical consultant with L'Oreal, shall go to the ball - but, she says, "generally I'm girl Friday on the day".
Whelan's day-to-day job involves training hairdressers in the correct use of L'Oreal products in salons throughout the country. She organises courses and monitors the people who use the products, making sure that they are all up-to-date on every new technique and procedure.
"It's probably perceived to be a glamorous job, but you work hard," she says. "It involves dealing with all our portfolio accounts."
Last week she travelled to Cork, Bray, Mullingar and back to Dublin. In her job she has to organise and co-ordinate training courses for staff in up to 43 salons. She also liaises with the salon managers to discuss how training is going and to map areas that need to be worked on in the coming year. Training methods, she explains, tend to be inter-active and are quite enjoyable for people.
From time to time she will spend a morning in a salon looking at how each staff member works, and deciding on who should attend a refresher course at the L'Oriel technical centre in Dublin's Leeson Street - training sessions at which she is one of the instructors.
"I do all the colouring and volumising - most people need style support, that's what volumising is. We also have courses where we would train people to retail more effectively in all the products that we manufacture.
Whelan went to school with the Sisters of Charity in Stanhope Street, Dublin. After her Leaving Cert, she went to the City of Dublin VEC's Crumlin College to study hairdressing. "I loved it," she says. "I wanted to get the basics rather than be thrown in at the deep end." She had already worked part-time from the time she was 14 in a hairdresser's in Dorset Street, Dublin, and her experience stood to her.
After completing the one-year VEC course and her work placements, she worked for five years in Frank Hession's salon in Drumcondra. She then worked as manager in Knights of the Green, a barber shop in the Stephen's Green Centre. After almost a year there she applied for a job with L'Oriel.
"I knew I was good at what I did, but I wanted to progress beyond that. My job now is more training-oriented, though I am still in the salon to a degree."
Hairdressing, she says, "is a very sociable trade. The work is hard but it's very rewarding. You have to be in good form, and you have to relate well to people because you are coaxing information out of them about style and colour."
While more and more people compete for university places, she points out that "there's a chronic shortage of people going into hairdressing". It is a job that she loves. "You certainly have to be a little bit creative - it's not an easy career."
