Living Window

We decided to base our latest blog post on one of our favourite and most creative features in our salon – our living window displays.

We started the Living Window back in the spring of 2013 at a time where the sun was starting to shine on our salon window, revealing its many fingerprint marks and rain drops. Spending more time cleaning the window area allowed us to discover what a perfect suntrap, or rather in our mind, perfect greenhouse it is. 

With limited allotment space these days, we thought this could be the perfect area for those all-important seeds to create some fabulous sunflowers. This then followed on a year later with our successful gift idea to give a sunflower to any of our wonderful clients purchasing our new range of sustainable beauty products from Davines.

This idea continued to grow (excuse the pun) into the next spring which saw Paula harvest her first batch of veg in the salon.

We updated our Living Window this year by displaying our beautiful natural plants alongside our lovely Davines ‘Product of the Month’ showcasing all the wonderful natural products found in Davines’ products.

One of the best outcomes from our Living Window is how it’s got the salon talking! Whilst Pip’s tips helped Paula’s ever inspiring garden collection, it was our lovely clients who made the real difference, offering advice all year round which has helped us keep growing a lovely colourful window. 

Within the PS team we always manage a chance to talk plants, whether it’s joking about our maternal side coming out; with Paula naming some of the plants as her babies, or sometimes a few sad moments when some just need to be composted. And without too many problems on who’s watering what, it has become a great focus on showing our lovely team work.

We asked everyone in our PS team to share their favourites from over the time…

Paula “Mine has to be the spring herb garden -inspired by Jo Malone’s window of fragrances seen in Kensington this year. I just loved the layers of pots you can plant with each one very unique in smell and appearance whilst still always complementing each other”.

Becki “I really enjoyed making origami stars with Ellie at Christmas so in February I asked my nephew to help me make origami hearts for our Love display.”

Ellie “Our Great British seaside holiday in August 2015 had such cute details.  The gorgeous grasses brought the coast to Frimley!”

And Pippa explained why the Kitchen window was her favourite display;

“The idea for the kitchen themed window came about to celebrate our seventh birthday, because it was all about cake!

Cake is the first thing people usually think about when planning a birthday party... and because it starts in the kitchen- so did our window display. We also discussed ideas of 'the perfect recipe for a great hair do' and the same for a great salon team.

It was great fun planning the display and making the furniture we needed, including the gingham curtain. Collecting our 50s vintage utensils from our own kitchens was also a nice way of demonstrating teamwork... Adding hair tools finished off the look. Our sister Katharine was instrumental in dressing the window and even created some black and white 'tiles' to frame it.

I think the best thing of all about our October '15 window was how much it engaged passers by. We get a lot of interest from our window displays, some people look forward to what we will think up next and others think we have lost the plot! Whatever the reaction, we love the fact it gets people talking.”

Our Living Window has become very season-based which we have kept in running with the health and wellbeing inside the salon. PS’ third creative sister Katharine has helped us to incorporate furniture and ornaments and a certain sense of style to the window to complement the plants on display.

   

This year so far we have managed to create themes including an awesome winter bulb incubation, a spring herb garden (which changes monthly) as well as a summer holiday wish list.

Alongside learning these plant techniques our PS team have tried their hands at origami (as mentioned by Becki above) and homemade wooden planters, encouraged by our love of upcycling.

So who says our creative talents and interests have to stop at hairstyling? As a team we find it so much fun to try new things and showcase them within our shop. And it’s even better when our lovely clients join in as they have done this year with donations of aloes and trees.

A sense of community has definitely been brought into the salon through our window, which has become our best way to communicate our identity. So come down to Frimley High Street and have a look for yourselves!