Veteran Hair Stylist Opens London Colour on Sunset

‘It’s a dream come true,’ said Denni Geed, an Englishman who recently opened London Colour Studio on Sunset across from Ralphs. ‘I’m lucky to get a salon in the Palisades.’ In these perilous economic times and facing entrenched competition from a half-dozen salons in town, Geed has a strategy’his experience and his prices. ‘Our services are about 30 percent below our competitors,’ he said. A cut and blow dry starts at $45 for women, and men’s cuts start at $28. ‘We are definitely a color salon,’ said Geed, who previously owned a salon in Topanga Canyon. ‘I do dimensional hair coloring, which is more advanced than regular coloring.’ For example, instead of using just one color for women who get highlights ($65), Geed might blend different colors, including gold and brown tones. A native of Cambridge, England, Geed started his career as a stylist when he was 14, working part-time shampooing hair in a beauty shop that his mom favored. ‘I went into the salon where there were 25 cute girls working, and I couldn’t believe my luck,’ he said. ‘I asked, ‘Where do I sign up?” Instead of going on to college, Geed worked as an apprentice at Vidal Sassoon in London for three years. ‘British hairdressers are trained differently than American ones,’ he said. ‘From day one you’re working on hair, and instead of nine months of training, it’s three years.’   After working briefly in Milan, Geed moved to Los Angeles (where he worked for Carlton Salons for seven years) and then to New York City, where he joined the Jacques Dessange salon on 64th and Madison. After a short time, the company sent him to train in Paris for six months, and when he returned he helped launch the company’s new salon on Fifth Avenue across from Rockefeller Center.   In 1989, Geed returned to Los Angeles, where he met his wife Sally (they now have two children, Dylan and Libby) and opened his first salon, Sienna Hair Colouring Studio, in Topanga in 1991, which was instantly popular.   ’I had a nice monopoly up there,’ Geed said, ‘but I wanted to be in a busier neighborhood; I wanted to be in the Palisades.’   Last November, after a brief search, he found a space next to the Coldwell Banker office, and spent the next six months designing and constructing the interior. ‘It was important to me to design the space,’ Geed said. ‘I’m going to be there every day, so it’s got to feel right for me.’   Customers might feel that this is more like a meditative retreat than a beauty salon. Instead of sitting in a chair, facing a wall of mirrors lit with fluorescent lighting, clients face a slate wall with water rushing over the surface into a turquoise/black pebble bed.   The salon’s interior stonewalls provide a cool, comfortable feel and the stone-laid floor is lit with miniature spotlights. If a customer insists upon looking in a mirror, two overal mirrors are encased in wood and copper on either side of the waterfall wall.   ’I brought the outdoors inside,’ Geed said of his salon design.   While having their hair done at London Colour Studio, customers don’t have to look at Geed’s tools of trade, such as blow dryers, hair products and accessories. He keeps his ‘junk’ in a organizational palette that can be moved from chair to chair or put away. He invented the palette in the mid-90s and ‘it’s now used by all the major hair companies, like Logics, Joico, Matrix, Redken and Sexy Hair,’ said Geed, who has applied for a patent.   This fall, he wants to offer a fundraiser to all local schools. ‘I would have a whole team of haircutters and we would suggest a price to the people in the salon and that money would go towards the school,’ Geed said.   London Colour Studio is currently open seven days a week. Call: (310) 573-9444.