Hakim Elhocine.

Ouaguenoun to Mayfair

Hakim Elhocine was born in 1991 in Ouaguenoun, in the Tizi Ouzou province of northern Algeria. He is the eleventh of twelve children — eight sisters and four brothers — the youngest of the boys, with one younger sister after him.

The family kept a small shop selling fruit and vegetables. Then his mother opened a salon, and he was in it from as far back as he can remember himself. The salon was in Tizi Ouzou first and later in Algiers.

He was a strong student, strongest in the sciences, and he did what a strong student in an Algerian family does: he read biology at USTHB in Algiers for a year, then spent a year in Paris. He did not like it. He had been working in the salon since he was fourteen — school first, then every hour that was left — and that was the part of the day he had been waiting for. So he stopped studying biology and went to do hair properly.

It is a family of professions — teachers, lawyers, scientists, economists — and every one of them can also do hair. One of his sisters keeps a salon in Rome. Whatever else an Elhocine turns out to be, they grew up knowing how a head should sit.

Tailoring, not styling

“I don’t do hair. I tailor it — to the face, the night, the woman.”

It is the whole method in one line. A colour is designed for the skin it sits against and the light it will be seen in, not copied off a chart or a phone screen. A cut is built around bone structure and around how you dry your own hair on a Tuesday morning, because that is the version of it you will live with.

So a first appointment starts with a conversation before anything is mixed: what the hair has had done to it, what it will take, what it will hold, and what it will look like when it grows out. If the honest answer is that a look will take three sittings rather than one, that is the answer you will get.

The record

Twenty years at the chair, and most of them spent on colour. Seven of those years were as personal stylist to Sir Elton John, including the red carpet at the Oscars — work measured in punctuality and discretion as much as in technique, and the reason this house is run by appointment rather than by footfall. Dave Clark has been in his chair for more than eight years.

Elsewhere the work has included Victoria Beckham, Geri Halliwell and Jasmine Sanders. Most of the names are not published, which is rather the point of the arrangement.

Runway and editorial

Hakim was Head of Hair Design for Atelier Zuhra at London Fashion Week SS23, and for Rafinity’s AW23 collection — leading the hair for a full runway show: every head, one look, one hour, no second attempt. He has also worked the Balmain show in Paris.

In print, his work appeared in British Vogue’s feature on the Mina Habchi wedding in 2025, and in the Financial Times’ profile of Becky Fatemi in 2024.

That backstage discipline is what the atelier is built on. Nothing about a Fashion Week call sheet survives improvisation, and neither does a nine-hour colour correction.

How the house works

The atelier is private and appointment only. There is no waiting bench and no queue — the chair is held for the length of your sitting, which is the point of working this way. It means the diary is smaller than a Bond Street salon’s, and it means the person who consulted on your colour is the person who applies it.

Colour is the centre of the house: balayage, highlights, glossing, grey blending and correction. Around it sit couture cutting, the blow-dry the house is judged on every week, Virgin Russian extensions, smoothing and treatment work, bridal and red carpet, the Gentlemen’s Suite, and the Bond Street Nail Atelier in its own room.

The house was at 60 Baker Street before this. It moved to Blenheim Street because that stretch of Baker Street is being redeveloped — and Mayfair, a minute from Bond Street, is where the work belonged anyway. Clients who knew the salon there will find the same hands here.

If you are not sure what to book, telephone the atelier and it will be placed for you. That is usually the fastest route for colour correction, extensions and bridal, which are quoted after a consultation rather than off a list.