Stephen and Lucy Marr follow the latest trends in sustainable beauty while balancing on the unforgiving razor-edge of fashion
Hair stylists Stephen and Lucy Marr
PHOTO: Chris Skelton
If you were compiling a list of the nation’s top glamour couples, you’d have to include stylists-to-the-stars Stephen and Lucy Marr. The Stephen Marr salons and Lucy and the Powder Room beauty parlour follow the latest trends in sustainable beauty while balancing on the unforgiving razor-edge of fashion. You can enjoy a fair-trade coffee during a treatment, have your hair coloured with vegetable-based organic hair tints, indulge in a paraben-free facial or organic body buff, get your nails painted with toluene and formaldehyde-free polish, and take purchases home in a reusable calico bag.
“Our commitment to sustainability is a total journey, not just front of house, or a carbon-neutral stamp—though we’re pursuing that as well,” says Lucy.
“Looking into things sometimes raises more questions than answers,” adds Stephen. “There’s so much spin and misinformation out there. It can be amazing how little people know and how disempowered they can be over the choices they make. People want straight answers.”
After meeting in 1994—about eight months into Stephen’s fledgling business—they married in a quickie wedding a year later. Today the couple have two pre-school boys, Billy and Johnny. Add to that a staff of 50 and hundreds of clients coming through the salon doors every week, and “it can feel like you’re salmon swimming upstream,” admits Lucy. “But there’s scope in this industry to go from the big picture to the incredibly detailed. It’s about implementing thoughtful methods and processes; you need a vision of where you’re going and to celebrate the small achievements.”
Over the past decade or so the couple have worked with fashion heavyweights Karen Walker, Nom D and Kate Sylvester. Their work has appeared in magazines, on film, TV and album covers, in advertising campaigns and both the Air New Zealand and Sydney Fashion Weeks. Both Lucy and Stephen count themselves lucky to work in an area where they’re surrounded by top creative talents and where they can access quality information.
The perception is that sustainable practices cost more, says Lucy. And sometimes they do—like ensuring that all their tint tubes, foils and developer bottles are taken away by specialists to be rendered inert and recycled. But the internal discipline also increases efficiency. Every decision is considered in terms of energy use and waste products. Reviewing their consumption of hair colour products, for instance, resulted in thousands of dollars saved.
“It’s enriched our internal culture,” says Lucy. “Staff are proud to work for a company with values they share. We invest in education. We try to explain why we do things, like turn everything off at night.” Once they took all their staff to see An Inconvenient Truth.
“The next project we’re planning,” says Stephen “will incorporate sustainable considerations into every aspect of the building.”
Working as a couple? “It’s intense,” says Lucy, “but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Stephen and I love the all-encompassing nature of working together, with family being the most important thing to us. We make a good team, I think. And one of the best things about sharing a business is the flexibility to enjoy the best of both worlds.”
