London woman who was so stressed her hair fell out starts award-winning wellness business that’s now in Selfridges
ALondon woman who suffered from burnout which ultimately led to her losing her hair has managed to completely transform. Laura Tudor said what happened to her when she was 28 was a ‘shock but not a surprise’.
Laura, moved to London when she was 18 from Chester to follow her dreams of pursuing fashion design. After finishing her studies at Central Saint Martins and London School of Fashion, she has lived in London for nearly half her life. After graduating, she started and ran her own headwear business for eight years.
As she ran her business, however, she watched her priorities and ultimately her life changing around her. She was working seven days a week, wasn’t eating well and she started to burn out.
Laura, from Notting Hill, told MyLondon: “I didn’t know how to look after myself properly. When I was that young, I started to burn out. At the time I knew nothing about what was happening to me.
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“I lost about a third of my hair in the space of two months. It was coming out in clumps, it was really scary. I started talking to my friends about it – I couldn’t believe I had friends of mine who either had been going through something similar or knew someone that did. I was a young woman, 28, who spent my whole 20 years focusing on my career and this was a wake-up call.”
Due to a combination of factors that Laura found out through her research, she found that the stress of running her business combined with her diet was impacting her life. She stopped brushing her hair because when she did, “clumps” would come out.
She found herself in a “vicious cycle” of stressing about her hair loss but knowing that her worrying would prolong the issues. She had to try and get the balance back into her life.
She said: “So much of our identity is in our hair. I lost my confidence and of course, it doesn’t matter if you have hair or not but it’s about feeling good about yourself. It felt embarrassing and felt like there was a lot of shame around it because I didn’t know how to stop it.
Laura Tudor lost a 1/3 of her hair© Fabio Esposito
“I didn’t know how to look after myself properly. I’m lucky I have my husband and we’ve been together from a young age. He’s a hairdresser and he gave me a lot of advice and helped me address the root causes of the situation. My husband has seen hair loss through his job but he saw it up close and personal. We started doing a deep dive into what was happening to me and I researched natural remedies and got blood tests and I knew I had to slow down.”
She closed her business and started focusing on herself. After visiting Balance Festival, a health and wellness event, she found herself surrounded by women like her. She found other young women who were looking to prioritise their health as well – they were going through stress-related health issues.
After feeling inspired to start her own product line, she pitched it to her husband. Launching in February 2020, right before the first lockdown, they founded CENTRED.
“Sustainability is at the core of starting our own business. For every bottle sold, we take 10 times the amount of plastic out of the environment. Our contribution goes to a project in India which supports an ecosystem of waste pickers and sorters. Opening in 2020 wasn’t the best timing but we were able to help a lot of our customers and it made us focus on our customers early on.
“Covid was a big part of our opening. With the stress alone that we were all going through, I think we were able to support and serve so many different people through that time. We had so many people reach out to say we’ve helped. Your hair is the last part of the body to receive nutrients but the first to be withheld from.
“As women, and people overall, we will experience hair loss at several different times in our life. For me, it was a stressful event but for others it could be a traumatic event, having a baby or when there’s a hormonal change”, Laura added.
Laura still finds herself working too much but has better control of things now. She has found that a better work-life balance has helped her find out what her body needs. By focusing on nutrition, CENTRED offers different supplements to target specific pain points and then the outside care of hair care products. They were recently stocked in Selfridges.
Laura’s main aim is to support people through their hair troubles and stop them from “suffering in silence”. They want to help as many people as they can instead of focusing on turnover.
Laura said: “We’ve grown really quickly and because of that I can help so many more people. My hair was falling out a lot and I was losing hair not just on my head, but on my eyebrows and arms as well. It really cuts your confidence. Our biggest message is healthy hair and the things you need to do.
“I have to tell myself that I’m working too hard at the moment and then correct that. I had to slow down and prioritise my health and I felt really desperate at the time.”
