The short answer
I am Vitalii Prisacari, and Matted Hair London is my studio in Catford, London. I do one thing: restore matted, tangled and knotted hair without cutting, for every hair type from 1A to 4C. I have done it since 2020, across more than 1,000 restorations, 99% saved without cutting, with VTCT Level 3 certification and 27 qualifications behind the work. Every case starts with a free 10-minute phone consultation.
My main qualification is the VTCT Skills Level 3 Diploma in Women's Hairdressing, an Ofqual regulated qualification (number 600/1482/9) awarded to me on 30 April 2026. It includes the Level 4 unit Hair and Scalp Specialist Services, which covers the scalp as well as the hair. I am a State Registered Hairdresser with the Hair Council. I also hold First Aid at Work and the Level 2 Certificate in Awareness of Mental Health Problems, and I am a Mental Health First Aider trained by MHFA England, because many of the people who come to me are going through a hard time. See all my qualifications and certificates.
How Matted Hair London Began
Matted Hair London started with me helping my wife after work, a few lines of text on a website, and one client I could not say no to.
It Began with Helping My Wife (2019)
In 2019 my wife Ariadna opened her hair extension studio in London, AV Extension, after working with extensions since 2016. Her diary filled quickly, on the strength of her quality and her care, and extension work runs on tight bookings: fittings, corrections, removals, often more clients in a week than there are days in it. When she needed help to keep up, I stepped in. My job was preparing each client before new extensions went in: removing the old keratin bonds, detangling the light matting that builds up over nearly three months of wear, then washing and drying. Routine work. A full detangle and comb-through took me 30 to 40 minutes.
Within a few months, the same job was taking 90 minutes, sometimes 120. Clients were arriving with hair far more tangled than a well-fitted extension should ever leave behind: work done elsewhere, other techniques, other products. So we put a notice on the AV Extension website: light detangling under 30 minutes stayed free, but severely or moderately matted hair that needed a full comb-through would be charged for the time it took.
That notice contained words we wrote without thinking twice: tangled hair, matted hair, detangling, detangler. Google indexed them. Within months, messages began arriving from people who did not want extensions at all. They wanted one thing: someone to detangle severely matted hair without cutting it. By the end of 2019, a new person was writing to me almost every day. Without meaning to, we had stumbled onto a service people were searching for and could rarely find in Britain.
The Ten-Hour Case That Decided Everything
At the end of 2019 a woman wrote to me in despair. She had just left hospital after spinal surgery and could not travel. Her hair was the most severely matted I had ever seen, and every option in front of her ended with scissors. She had grown that hair her whole life. I knew far less then than I know now, but a single thought settled it: if I do not help her, who will?
That became my first home visit. In person, the hair looked worse than in the photos she had sent. Because of her spine she could not sit for long, so we found a position that was comfortable for her and hard for me: she lay on the bed with her head supported at its edge, and I worked kneeling on the floor, leaning towards her so she would feel no pulling and no pain. Of the ten hours the detangling took, roughly two I spent standing and eight on my knees.
Seven hours in, 99% of my brain was telling me to apologise and stop, to say it could not be done. The other 1% kept repeating two thoughts: if not me, then who? And if I give up now, I will give up every time it gets hard.
After ten hours, the hair was completely detangled. Nothing was cut. She was happy beyond words, and I had learned the three things that define this studio to this day: almost any case can be saved with enough patience, the mental battle is half the work, and this needed to become the only thing I do.
Building a Dedicated Studio (2020 Onwards)
2020 began with a plan: a professional website holding everything a person with severely matted hair needs to know, and a commitment to become a real expert rather than a well-meaning amateur. There was almost nowhere to learn. In 2020 I could not find a single salon in the UK that offered dedicated detangling, and trustworthy information was rare. I built the knowledge case by case and course by course: 27 verified qualifications so far, plus everything Ariadna, an expert in hair extensions, taught me about hair along the way.
Somewhere in those years I also developed my own detangling spray and post-restoration treatment, made with ingredients I am licensed to import and refined through years of testing. It is not sold anywhere, only used in my sessions, at the studio in Catford and on home and hospital visits across London.
Today people come to this studio from all over the UK, usually after every salon has given the same answer: cut it, nothing else can be done. After more than 1,000 restorations, my answer is still the one from that first night in 2019. Priority number one has never changed: to save your hair, not cut it. Matted. We Save Hair, Not Cut It.