There were two of us in the phonebox on Cricklewood Broadway that sunny Monday afternoon. We were both assistants at John Frieda at the time, both with the same idea about where we wanted to be – on set. We were skint and shared the rent for a room in a flat above our landlord’s afro salon. £45 each/week, mostly paid for from our tips. If my rent fell behind, I’d make it up washing out relaxers for her on Sundays.

I’d heard the name Streeter’s on set enough times by that point so summoned up the courage to find the agency’s number in the good ol’ Yellow Pages. Beverley (Streeter) had helped Eugene Souleiman get where he was. If you wanted to work in fashion as a hairdresser, hers was the number. We both knew it…

I put in the 50p and called.

Tentatively I asked how we could go about assisting something along the lines of:

“Hi, we’re assistants at John Frieda and we want to work in fashion, ideally assisting Eugene…”

That sounds pretty audacious when I see it in writing like that, but in the moment it felt perfectly normal.

“Can you come to the office in Farringdon next Monday?”

As Korean was his first language, I’d been doing the talking, we’d been sharing the earpiece until that point. I turned to him and raised a questioning eyebrow. He looked panicky, but there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt in my mind. I went alone.

Beverley put me directly in touch with Eugene who invited me over to his place later that week. He cooked me a simple delicious dinner, steamed new potatoes, peas and carrots in minty butter with milk poached fish. Over a couple of beers we talked about what I thought of the training at Toni & Guy and John Frieda, what assisting experience I’d had and why I wanted to work in fashion.

The hospitality, the attention, the respect and kindness with which Eugene treated me is as fresh in my mind today as it was then. It was one of the most memorable and life changing exchanges I’ve ever had looking back it almost feels like some surreal dream.