Verity Ollerenshaw is a Leeds-based colour specialist and educator with over 13 years behind the chair. From soft, lived-in blondes to rich brunettes and expert colour corrections, colour is more than a service to Verity. It's her craft, her signature, and the thing that lights her up every single day. Alongside styling, she teaches the next generation of colourists through one-to-one mentoring, sold-out classes and a brand-new online academy, and is the founder of bleach-proof clothing line Mane The Label.

Where it al started

Verity's story begins in Leeds, where she grew up, and where, at just 15 years old, she went door to door with a handful of CVs, hoping someone would give her a chance. She walked into a salon, and they hired her on the spot for a Saturday job. She ran straight out to her dad, who was waiting in the car, and the two of them sat there buzzing with excitement. That first "yes", shared with her dad, was the beginning of everything. She went on to study at Garforth College, working her way through Levels 1, 2 and 3, learning the fundamentals of hairdressing from the ground up. During her Level 2 and 3 training she took a part-time role at a salon in Leeds city centre, and that's where the doors really started to open: new opportunities, and the chance to network with other stylists, salons and academies who would shape the years ahead.

Falling in love with colour

Somewhere along the way, colour became her thing. From soft, lived-in blondes to rich brunettes and the careful art of colour correction, Verity honed her craft year after year and developed her own methods, built over more than a decade behind the chair.

For Verity, it has never really been about the colour itself. It's the moment a client turns to the mirror and sees a version of themselves they love. That quiet lift of confidence is the feeling she's chased for over thirteen years, and it still gets her every single time.

Her own space: Routed Creative Studio

Five years ago, Verity took the leap that so many stylists dream of: she opened a space of her own on Call Lane, in the heart of Leeds city centre, and named it Routed Creative Studio. Her original vision was to work solo, and for the first two years that's exactly what she did, just Verity and her clients. Then she decided to build a team, growing Routed on a model of self-employed stylists supported by employed assistants who keep each day running smoothly. Her aim was a workplace that felt relaxing but fun, with real team spirit: somewhere people love to work as much as clients love to visit.

And the idea behind it was genuinely new. Verity wanted a space that didn't feel like a salon at all, but like a beautiful, professional co-working studio: clean, bright and homely, where clients could sit and work, chat and catch up while they had their hair done. At its heart is a co-working table, where Verity colours a client's hair while they tap away on a laptop or chat with the other guests around them. It's warm, social and relaxed: a home-from-home experience that, as far as she knows, no one in the hair industry had really done before.

Even the smallest details are considered. The mirrors are tilted at an angle so that every client feels like they're in a private, one-to-one appointment, even with other stylists working in the same room. It makes the whole thing feel personal, which is exactly the point. It became home to her clients, and soon after, home to her teaching too.

Passing it on

Education found Verity almost by accident. Around 2020, another stylist asked if she could learn from her, a simple request that started it all. Verity took her on one-to-one, and word spread quickly. Demand grew and grew, and before long that mentoring had built into full classes of over 40 stylists from across the hair industry, travelling to learn the methods she'd spent over a decade refining.

What she loves most is the people: meeting new stylists, watching them grow, and helping them better themselves. She takes real pride in lifting others up, and education has become one of the most meaningful parts of her work.

That reputation, and the business she'd built, brought industry recognition. In 2021, Verity was named a finalist in the Creative HEAD Awards, in the Entrepreneur category, a nod to everything she'd created off her own back: her studio, her education, and her growing name. Soon after, she was invited to take part in Creative HEAD's In Session, a live show in London where she appeared alongside four other educators, including respected industry names Charlie Cullen, Michelle Sultan and Giuseppe Stelitano. To share that stage was a milestone, and a sign of just how far that 15-year-old handing out CVs had come.

Mane The Label

For years, Verity has built a loyal Instagram following, and she takes real pride in inspiring other stylists, sharing her work, her world and her everyday life online. Fittingly, that's exactly where her next venture began.

In 2024, she bought an apron from H&M and posted it online. Stylist after stylist messaged asking where it was from, and a lightbulb went on. If that many people wanted it, why not create her own? She launched a line of creative hairstylist aprons with a modern twist, selling them at her education classes and online to the stylists who followed her.

From there it grew into something much bigger. The aprons became a full range of bleach-proof clothing for hairdressers, tops, dresses and shorts, and in 2025 the brand was established as Mane The Label.

Mane The Label is, once again, Verity doing something different. Bleach-proof clothing solves a problem every colourist knows too well: everyday clothes ruined by a single splash. Each piece is designed to survive the job, saving stylists the cost of replacing clothes month after month, and letting them wear something to work that's comfortable and stylish. The first launch sold out, and a whole new online community grew up around it, in the UK and overseas.

And Verity's vision doesn't stop at the salon. She wants Mane The Label to become a fashion brand in its own right: pieces people love and wear every day, whether they're stylists or not.

Towards the end of 2025, Verity made a big decision: she sold Routed Creative Studio. After everything she'd built, she wanted the freedom to put her clients first, to travel and work, to help Mane The Label grow, and, most of all, to spend more time with the people who matter most: her family.

Through it all, being fully booked remains the achievement she's proudest of. Not an award on a shelf, but the quiet, daily proof that her clients trust her, come back to her, and recommend her. For someone who started with nothing but a stack of CVs and a dream, that trust is everything.

And she's not slowing down. Verity's newest project is her very own online academy, a way for stylists anywhere in the world to learn from her, wherever they are. The girl who once knocked on salon doors in Leeds is now teaching a global community, entirely on her own terms.

If she could go back and tell that fifteen-year-old, CVs in hand, heart racing, running out to her dad's car, where it would all lead, she's not sure she'd believe it. Her own studio. An award nomination. A stage in London. A clothing brand. An academy. But ask Verity what she's proudest of, and it isn't any of those things. It's the trust. The clients who keep coming back. The stylists who travel to learn from her. The family she's built her freedom around. Everything else grew from a teenager who was brave enough to knock, and a love of this craft that has never once faded. That's what it all means. That's why she does it.