From the archives: Bleach London through the years40 Images
Before there was Bleach London, there was Grot Bags. The short-lived club night, started by Alex Brownsell and friend Bella Howard, was centred around everything “gross”, with each event boasting a different theme. There were body bags, fun bags and blood bags (the latter saw the pair hang bloody tampons around the ceiling as decoration). Held in East London, their friend Danny Fox would create flyers for the nights, and the aim was to offer a gritty alternative to the reigning trend of the early 00s: boho chic.
“I just thought it was really naff, and what could we do that’s the opposite,” says Brownsell, thinking back on the era of peasant skirts, embroidered tunics and beachy waves. “We tried to be disgusting, the opposite of being hot, although all we really wanted to do was pull.” While Brownsell claims Grot Bags didn’t achieve those original romantic purposes (“it became a really cool gay night”), they were successful in creating a scene that championed an aesthetic that broke away from the mainstream, allowing people to express themselves on their own terms.
It feels strange – almost unbelievable, even – to think that there was a time when someone having colourful hair would upset and offend others. But that’s because we are in a post-Bleach London era. Brownsell says she used to receive a lot of criticism for her hair, which would often result in her being shouted at in the street. “When I went back to the Midlands, my mum was devastated,” she says. With Grot Bags, their subsequent club night Ratmilk, and then later Bleach, Brownsell and her friends were trying to build a world that was all about exploring what they could make out of nothing. How could they create a look that wasn’t desirable?
“Guys would be like, ‘ugh why are you dyeing your hair purple again?’” she laughs. “It’s hard for young girls because you’re forced to be hot and good-looking. I used to find it daunting – and I still do. Bleach has always been for you, not for being sexy.”
It wasn’t just the colours – both pastels and more vivid shades of greens, blues, oranges and pinks – that were shocking, but the techniques as well. Brownsell would purposefully dye in her clients’ roots, a look she dubbed “recession roots” and which evolved into the dip dye that would soon define the beauty aesthetic of the decade. Katie Shillingford, at the time Dazed’s fashion editor, was one of the first dip-dye guinea pigs, and her white blonde hair with inky black ends (inspired by a Gareth Pugh piece) quickly became a Tumblr mainstay.
In 2009, Brownsell, alongside Sam Campbell (née Teasdale) and Lou Teasdale, went grey and were written up in The Times. At the time, it was all very DIY, both out of choice but also necessity. You couldn’t just go down to the high street and pick up a box of bleach, lilac toner and silver shampoo like you can today (thanks to Bleach!). To achieve the grey tones, Brownsell would struggle to source niche Wella toners from the 80s that no one used anymore. The desire and demand for these anti-beauty looks was there, however, which became clear from how immediately Bleach changed the game once they arrived on the scene.
In just a few short years, Brownsell went from dyeing her friends’ hair in her flat’s kitchen sink to operating a single chair in the back of Sharmadean Reid’s WAH nails salon with business partner Campbell (2010). She then opened a salon in Dalston (2010), a pop-up in Topshop (2011), and launched a full line of products with Boots (2013). Brownsell was just 22 by the time she was operating Bleach’s first salon, and although she says that in the moment they didn’t realise how groundbreaking what they were doing was – they were just having fun – the effect on the industry was huge. “The industry was quite natural back then. Apart from MAC, make-up wasn’t that creative and on-set it was very natural – people didn’t like wacky styles,” says Brownsell. “It was easy [to create trends] because nobody else was doing it. You could disrupt without thinking about it because nothing else was there.”
Soon it wasn’t just the East London it-crowd (Alice Dellal, Florence Welch, Pixie Geldof, Elizabeth Fraser-Bell, Emma Wyman, Nell Kalonji, Kaya Scodelario etc) who were rocking rainbow hair, but those around the world: King Kylie, Sky Ferreria, Amber Le Bon, Alison Mosshart, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj. Dip dyes transcended the streets of Dalston to take over the catwalks of Milan and the red carpets of Hollywood. It didn’t hurt that Campbell’s twin Lou toured with One Direction as their hairstylist and make-up artist for years, spreading the Bleach mentality and aesthetic to fans around the world. Suddenly, the niche alt-beauty anti-hero look was mainstream.
Brownsell says that the first year was “crazy.” “It was exciting but scary. I was young and had a lot to handle.” At the time, they refused to do press, talk to camera or do collaborations – it wasn’t considered cool. A big part of the charm of Bleach was its anti-establishment approach. “People loved that they broke rules and did their own thing,” says friend Emma Elliott, a client of Brownsell’s dating back to the kitchen sink days who now helps with Bleach’s PR. “That was the spirit of their followers. The mainstream wasn’t interesting; they wanted more Grot Bags.”
Music was baked into the brand from the beginning, from the salon’s clientele to the names of the products – e.g. Tangerine Dream, The Big Pink and Violet Skies. The grunge-inspired aesthetics of the branding, as well as the name “Bleach”, and the font, borrowed heavily from Nirvana, something that some fans initially took issue with until Courtney Love got involved. “We were getting called out on Twitter for borrowing, or being influenced by, the Bleach album artwork. Nirvana fans were telling us off. But Courtney Love stepped in and defended us,” says Brownsell. “Courtney said she loved what we were doing and that we were so cool, and that Kurt would have loved it. After that, no one said anything again.”
Since then, the brand has gone from strength to strength. They have two salons in London and in 2021 opened a salon in LA. The following year, in partnership with Walmart, Bleach London products launched in 3,500 stores around America. They’ve done collaborations with everyone from Wolf Alice to Heaven by Marc Jacobs, and Brownsell has worked as a hairstylist for brands including Diesel, Miu Miu, Celine, Gucci, Vivienne Westwood, Vetements and Valentino – a sign of just how mainstream and high fashion the Bleach aesthetic has become. The brand has raised over £10 million in Series A investment, and their product range has grown from the initial 12 shades of non-permanent hair dye, the Super Cool Colours, to include haircare, bleach kits, tools, styling products and nine more shades of the non-permanent dyes.
Somehow, 15 years have passed, and yet we are in a similar cultural climate as we were when Bleach first launched. The cost of living crisis means that, like after the 2008 recession, people are once again looking for ways to cut down on beauty costs. “The salon industry is really suffering, so there is going to be more DIY or nothing at all,” says Brownsell. “‘Natural hair’ trends are more than trends – they’re financial choices. Recession roots, the brown hair trend. Red hair is going crazy too, it’s less commitment and you can do it really well at home – it’s hard to get wrong.”
Last year, Bleach moved into the permanent hair colour market for the first time – a sign of both the changing market and the brand maturing. While they made their name as a salon for experimenting and playing with colour, for non-commitment, this launch marked a new era. Named “No Bleach” since the dyes offer vivid permanent colour without bleaching, the range includes both natural shades (browns, black, copper) and more vivid reds and coppers. These are dyes for people ready to make a decision and settle down.
“The No Bleach look feels a bit more grown-up, I wanted to do something slightly different – different photographers, different packaging,” says Brownsell. “Young people now aren’t as DIY aesthetically. It’s more polished. People grow up quickly these days.” The launch has been a success, she says, with the Cherry Red shade becoming the best-selling product per store in the US ever, after only five weeks. This year, US retail sales surpassed the UK for the first time, three years since they launched in the country. “It’s still niche shades that do well, but moving into mainstream hair colour has really moved the dial for us around thinking about what we can be. It’s also made retailers take us more seriously because it’s more of a mass play.”
Despite this maturing, the brand has stayed true to its origins and values – “we’re still small and about 98 per cent female” – as well as its punk mentality. This is just as well, since we are as in need of Bleach’s ethos and aesthetic as ever. The ‘clean girl’ look and conservative trends like ‘quiet luxury’, which have dominated the last few years – and particularly since the election – are just as bland and palatable as the boho chic look of the early 2000s, and it’s begging to be disrupted.
Just as Brownsell and her friends were attempting to do with their grotty aesthetics, young people are pushing back against the idea that their main purpose is to look desirable and attractive to the mainstream. From the ‘ugly beauty’ trend to last year’s obsession with gross aesthetics and Chappell Roan’s dedication to subversive and transgressive beauty looks – one can easily picture her lipstick-smeared teeth and wig filled with cigarette butts at a Grot Bags night – we’re seeing the backlash begin. Meanwhile, last month, Kristen Stewart turned up at Cannes Film Festival with pink-tipped ends, prompting publications from Vogue to Nylon to The Cut and Popsugar to declare that the dip-dye was back.
For Bleach itself, it’s business as usual. They are continuing to offer their services at the salons and products for people at home. In July, they are launching the brand in South Africa and in the Netherlands, with a big launch in Amsterdam. “It’s a big market and they’ve never had a brand like Bleach before, so the shops there are still like pre-Bleach Boots shops,” says Brownsell. “They don’t really have experimental colour at all. They do with make-up, but not with hair. I think the Netherlands will be interesting because kids there are really cool.” With more European countries being eyed up for next on the list, the Bleach ethos is continuing to spread – and the Grot Bags aesthetic and message are living on.
